Medical Psychotherapy

Why choose Medical Psychotherapy?

A dual CCT in General Psychiatry/Psychotherapy provides the greatest opportunity to contribute to the shape of services going forward and this is the exciting challenge facing the consultants of the near future.

As a trainee what can I expect from my training programme?

Psychotherapy training is integrated into a joint CCT with General Psychiatry. The General Psychiatry component of training is based in locations that support the Psychotherapy component. Psychotherapy modalities available in this scheme are Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) and Psychodynamic Therapy. There are 2 Psychodynamic posts and 1 CBT post on the programme; training is based in the nationally renowned centres of each modality, the Newcastle CBT Centre and Claremont House.

The small size of the programme ensures that the needs of each trainee are individually supported. Opportunities to learn from expertise in treating health professionals exist for both modalities. The training provider Trust is in the process of rolling out an evidence-based treatment model across all services and the Psychotherapies are crucial to supporting this. While recruitment into Psychotherapy posts nationally has been challenging, this scheme has achieved a high success rate for appointments at consultant level. The adaptation of the training programmes to dual CCT, while retaining high levels of model fidelity, ensures that our trainees leave this scheme able to strongly compete in the job market.

What our trainees say:

In Psychotherapy you have the opportunity to really try to understand what lies at the root of people’s difficulties. I think for someone with a curious mind, training in psychotherapy is a real treat!

This job allows me to see a rich variety of clinical cases, and to use my psychodynamic understanding and skills in a number of different settings, ranging from providing direct clinical care myself, to supervision, consultation and teaching. I think it’s an enormous privilege to be allowed in to patient’s internal worlds, but it’s very hard work sometimes. It can be exciting, scary, sometimes terribly sad and uncomfortable.

To anyone considering the specialty I would say that if you’re curious about why people are the way they are, then choose to train in Psychiatry, then in Psychotherapy. It can be challenging, both intellectually and emotionally, but you won’t regret it!

Current vacancy information    (links to HEE website recruitment page) 

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