The Thought Broadcast
The Thought Broadcast primarily aims to demystify the Scholarly Project and humanise research by sharing the trainee experience. We will focus on some of the stories behind successful projects, including how the authors came up with ideas and transformed these into published research. Additionally, to complement the podcast series and better support trainees, we will hear from consultant psychiatrists who are experienced in publishing and research, and in supervising and examining the Scholarly Project.
As The Thought Broadcast develops, we hope to expand the podcast to discuss a wide range of research-related content with other trainees and early career psychiatrists. We hope that The Thought Broadcast can be an interactive experience with trainees from across Australia and New Zealand getting involved, and shaping the podcast in the direction that will benefit them the most.
The Thought Broadcast
Things I wish I'd known earlier in psychiatry training Part 1
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In this multi-part episode, RANZCP Appointed Trainee Board Director Ava Carter and Australasian Psychiatry Trainee Associate Editors Ahnoor Benipal and Fiona Wilkes discuss things they wish they’d known earlier in psychiatry training, and other useful information for new trainees. This was recorded in late 2024 when Ava, Ahnoor and Fiona were reaching the end of their advanced training in consultation liaison psychiatry (Ava) and psychiatry of old age (Ahnoor and Fiona). They discuss training program basics, specifics of the various stages, and advice for exams and other assessment. Part one discussions supervision, college structure, and useful information for Stage 1 trainees.
Music: https://freesound.org/people/ShadyDave/sounds/277375/
Logo: Sidonie Prentice
Disclaimer:
This podcast is provided to you for information purposes only and to provide a broad public understanding of various mental health topics. The podcast may represent the views of the author and not necessarily the views of The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists ('RANZCP'). The podcast is not to be relied upon as medical advice, or as a substitute for medical advice, does not establish a doctor-patient relationship and should not be a substitute for individual clinical judgement. By accessing The RANZCP's podcasts you also agree to the full terms and conditions of the RANZCP's Website. Expert mental health information and finding a psychiatrist in Australian or New Zealand is available on the RANZCP’s Your Health In Mind Website.
Hello and welcome back to the Thought Broadcast, the Trainee Focus Podcast from Australasian Psychiatry. Today's episode will focus on things I wish I'd known earlier in the training programme. Pretty well went tour of some of the things my colleagues and I did wrong earlier in our training and how to avoid the same mistakes. It's aimed at people coming into stage one, stage one trainees, and very early stage two. We'll also provide a brief overview of the training programme structure. My name's Fiona Wilkes. I'm a trainee editorial member of Australasian Psychiatry and a stage three trainee in psychiatry of old age. With me I have Drs Ava Carter and Anor Benepal, both also stage three trainees and frequent voices on the Thought Broadcast, but I'll let them introduce ourselves. Welcome Ava and Enor. I thought we might start this with a little bit of an introduction of ourselves and where we're at in the training program, uh how we got here, what we did before psychiatry because that's always interesting, and how we came to this and what we've done throughout our experience in the training program.
SPEAKER_00So uh Enor, I'll sorry to you first. Thanks, Fee. Yes, so before psychiatry, um I actually did a bachelor's of psychology and biology. Um I've always been quite interested in mental health and was thinking about doing clinical psychology, but then after one thing or another ended up in psychiatry and absolutely loving it. So I started out my training in Australia in Canberra and then halfway through moved back home to New Zealand. So I'm currently um in stage three also doing the old age advanced training. I've been working full-time throughout, and I've got about 14 months left to go now. Hooray!
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SPEAKER_04Awesome. What about you, Ava? I think a lot of people probably know you already, but want to give us the background again.
SPEAKER_01Of course, uh always. You know I love talking. So I'm Ava, everyone. I uh work in Canberra at the moment. I'm in my last uh, at this point, three months of stage three training doing advanced consultation liaison certificate and thoroughly enjoying my work in the emergency department as well as outpatient oncology and eating disorders and inpatient eating disorders. I am also the current board director in the trainee position at the moment, and my term finishes up in May uh 2025, which has also been a really wonderful experience and something that I'd recommend everybody start thinking about. It's a really fantastic leadership position. Definitely stretches you in a very positive way, I think. As many people know, probably before medicine I did dentistry and worked as a dentist for a while and really and still do and still registered and really enjoy that link between oral health and mental health. And um think it's very important, and we can't talk about it enough, but that's not the point of this podcast.
SPEAKER_03Which is a shame because I still need to talk to you about your church or fellowship when you which you've received at a doing next year, but we will say that for a different day.
SPEAKER_02So and um yeah, I've also staged three training as disclosure. Obviously, and Ava and I have all worked together before, and uh but we're in slightly different positions now. Um I'm doing psychiatry of old age. I came to psychiatry, I always did medicine in the morning to do things to do with brains, but then I came to psychiatry by way of neurosurgery, realised that wasn't for me, had to psych loving it. Um most of my training I did full-time until I got to the end of stage two when I went on maternity leave and then came back part-time for a while. So I'm also just about to be done. I've been so very excited to talk to people about how everything's gone in in the programme and things that I wanted to miss. And this uh podcast idea came up from talking just to my junior colleagues in our peer review groups about things that they were going through and and realizing, oh wait, actually, sometimes people miss things that we pick up later on, and for me there are quite a few things that would be really useful had I no one earlier rather than later. So in things that we need to cover, one of them is talking about supervision, which is really isn't something that gets done particularly in other specialties and is very different in psychiatry. So it took me a while, I think, to kind of get my head around it and to work out how to make it useful. And I know for a lot of people it tends to be this scary thing of whoa, what do I do? What do I talk about? You've got an hour a week that you have to be alone with your supervisor, or how do you use that time? What's the point? Um, Ava, I wonder whether you could maybe tell us a bit about from the college's perspective, slash your perspective, why that's important and how you can make it useful.
SPEAKER_01Of course, a lot of other specialties have different types of mentorship, whether it's near-peer or consultant to junior doctor mentorship. And often I think a lot of junior doctors get 360-degree mentorship through nursing staff and allied health in lots of different ways. But really, the psychiatric training program is aimed at providing support on all the different levels of education in the CAPE domains. Some of them are not the sort of processes that you would think of in medical training. So we're very much through medical school, internship, residency, and unaccredited registrar positions trained to follow the plan, A, B, C, D, you know, that recognized patterns of thinking frame of mind that is really important, and we often do it in psychiatry and in lots of other ways. But the difference here with supervision is that it's not a process for identifying fault, uh, and it's not a process for identifying areas of difficulty necessarily. It's really the process of learning how to reflect as a developing clinician and diagnostician in the field of psychiatry and mental health, which is not an easy thing to do without someone who's done it before, because it's a brand new specialty to most people who enter it. Certainly, what maybe I speak from my own experience here as a prior surgeon, but the difficulties with reflecting are that it can be quite vulnerable and talking about the way patients make you feel, which is normal in every specialty and in every part of society. The psych college recognises that, and to have the opportunity to talk with a senior colleague as your consultant, someone who also sees the patient, someone who also knows the experience of training and going through the college processes and how that can affect lots of different parts of our professional and I suppose non-professional experiences is really important. The RNT CP also has accreditation standards, as we all know, and part of those is to ensure that the trainee of whatever stage, one, two, or three, has an hour of supervision a week. Obviously, when when supervisors are on leave, sometimes that can get tricky. And you know, in practical terms, that may mean, for example, having supervision a little bit earlier in the weeks that you're together and doing a little bit more of it and then catching up when you get back. And in other ways, it can also mean having supervision with other consultants who are present on the wards or with you on the rotations whilst your normal supervisor is away. And there's lots of different ways that that can occur. But as you said, Fee, that the essence of it all is to utilize your consultant in a way to help you learn about what it is to be a psychiatrist. And I'm sure Anu will have different reflections as well, which are equally as important. But the the standard is to ensure that you have that one hour a week space, which is not being used necessarily for talking about patients and plans. It can be, uh, and I'm sure we'll talk about all the different CBD and EPAs and other things as we go on, and there's lots of other podcasts and info on the website about that. But at the core of it, and often what I've used it for, and it took me similarly to UFI quite a long time to figure out how to raise all those nuanced, you know, slightly emotional questions about oh, is it okay to feel upset or hurt or angry or sad or a little bit vulnerable? Because as doctors, we're not used to that. And I think Kim Jenkins, one of our past presidents of the college, talks about doctors' well-being really, really well. I mean, there's lots of podcasts on it, but her work in particular makes me feel very confident to be able to speak about all the difficult emotions that she experienced or that I've experienced as a as a psych. And without that supervision opportunity, I certainly wouldn't have been able to overcome a lot of the challenges that that I face, particularly in in the CL realm. It's a long way of saying it's really good.
SPEAKER_02And you're right, being able to I and I I think actually that is one of the things that I've learned most from supervision from those discussions with my various supervisors has been about recognizing and understanding and managing countertransference and and what that can tell you about a patient and how you can use that to come to diagnoses to help work out what's going on for them. And I don't think with our discussions in supervision, though it's easier when you've got someone who's knowledgeable and experienced and can teach you about it earlier. And how have you gone with working out with your supervisor what you wanted to do, setting goals, that kind of thing?
SPEAKER_00Again, when I started, I had absolutely no idea what it was meant to be. But we've had some really excellent sort of supervision training, which really pointed out, you know, you kind of need to take the reins into your own hands a little bit to get really quality supervision out of it, which is actually useful to you. So, you know, having a discussion when you initially set up the supervision contract with your new supervisor, talking about when the supervision is going to be, talking about how you'd best like to be supervised or how feedback could be provided. I think that's actually really useful. I also find that that in my own supervision, it's not just talking about, I guess, your own feelings or talking about patience. It can also be quite useful, especially as you move uh to sort of more and more senior level, talking about managing team dynamics and working with other people, because often that's something we don't really talk about and we just have to sit with. But again, being able to get the experience from really senior doctors who have been through it, who have been in these sort of leadership roles for ages, I found that really valuable.
SPEAKER_02Yes, I think that I I get a lot of this particular this year, there's been a lot of supervision about managing the team and kind of getting prepared to move into the consultant role of managing teams. I don't know, Ava, do you get that too, or is that an old age psychiatry specialty?
SPEAKER_01No, no, I think it's probably broadly across all subspecialties, but I have noticed particularly CL, old age, uh, and adults. It's certainly a a focus from what I've heard from other stage three trainees.
SPEAKER_02Well, it's so important. Managing the teams can sometimes be much more difficult than anything else that you do in your work day.
SPEAKER_01And important because the patient needs us to be advocates a lot of the time in in lots of different areas, and helping manage those dynamics is often a way of getting somebody the assistance they need, particularly as as all three of us are used to working in in acute hospital settings. And I wonder if we got a different trainee who'd mostly spent time in community in stage three, how different their experience would be in terms of that team dynamic. Perhaps the same, but maybe there's nuances that that aren't I haven't been exposed to necessarily because I've not done enough community work really to be able to talk to that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I suspect it'd be similar from uh this year I've been in the impatient, but I was outpatient old age last year and it's similar, different dynamic, different team, but still very important. So doing it again, is there anything that either of you would change if so if you were starting out in supervision and managing that?
SPEAKER_00Uh I think setting up a regular time where there's an expectation that both you and your supervisor will be there, that takes away a lot of the stress and confusion and panic. And obviously some supervisors are better at managing their own time and being there, and some struggle a bit with that. But I I do think that it's a lot nicer having the knowledge that you can save things up and save problems up and take them to them at a certain time, rather than having to chase people around or not being sure when you can actually get things off your chest. It makes a huge difference.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, absolutely. And I've I it's taken me a long time to be comfortable in expressing like what I need from a supervisor because I'm very much I'm so grateful for people being that's me you don't want to ask for anything else. But in in being able to say, No, look, I need you to do this, and probably recently being, oh actually, you know what? No, they're supervising you. That's a there it's a requirement that they're doing these things. It's not like I'm asking them for a favour. Um but it can be difficult because the service is so busy everywhere, we're all so stretched. I've talked to other trainees who have a real hard time because they just have locums but really short-term locums, so it's a short-term locum by short-term locum by short-term locum, and trying to manage that adds another layer of difficulty. While I've had locums, we have kind of longer-term ones that we know, so that's not been so much an issue for me, but I know it is for others. Just as you say, having that stability that you know you'll be able to come to someone and work through all the things that you need to work through. What about you, Eva? What would you change? Anything?
SPEAKER_01I like the idea of setting up a regular time. And it, you know, it's it's a tricky conundrum because within the psychology and and training program, you know, we don't have control over what hospitals do, and nor should we, you know. I think those two things need to be delineated. But it is hard as a stage one trainee to know what to do, you know, and how to manage that. So I would probably a little bit more conscious of when and and what time and what day I did my supervision. Having said that, I had a very excellent stage one set of supervisors who were very much onto me to make sure that the supervision occurred. But I certainly am aware of situations where that's harder. And I think it's also hard for the consultants who have a lot of different pressures to those trainees. I think I like to think of it as the intensity of experience for the pressures that both of us are under are the same. It's just the expectations of what that is might be different, and it's not to devalue either experience because you can't be a consultant if you're not one. But sometimes it's also hard for us to understand exactly what a consultant goes through in a day because we haven't done it yet. And I think my private practice experience in dental has helped me a little bit having mentored younger colleagues, but it's a common theme, particularly within the trainee advisory council and the Binational Committee for Trainees, that that supervision is a point of contention, and often not because the supervisors don't want to, it's very much a how do we balance this hospital service provision, patient care, all the time required for the notes. We don't want people to stay late, we don't want people doing overtime, but we still want you to really have that quality time with the consultant to learn and experience. But you know, in this evolving world it gets really hard. So I think as I'm reflecting now, I wonder whether that's also an opportunity to explore further within this role as the trainees have more of a voice and a space to reflect and help the college understand what it's like to be a modern psych registrar. Again, you know, as is the theme, a long way of saying a time slot in a week would be useful. But also having more confidence, I think, to talk to my clinical director when I was worried about things in terms of a college requirements and not being afraid that I was going to look like a bad registrar. I think I suffered from the bad registrar imposter syndrome for a long, long time. Probably still do if you ask my close colleagues. But but I often fear that. So something I'd tell younger Ava, don't be worried, just go and ask.
SPEAKER_02That so goes nicely into then if you are having issues, who do you go to about that?
SPEAKER_00I mean, from my perspective, I found it quite useful being able to go to the senior registrars or to people who've been in the service for a long time who know how things are run in that service because things are not run the same way between hospitals or between countries. But they tend to have the answers. Otherwise, as Ava was saying, yeah, the clinical director or one of the directors of training, they're all there to have your back and no one wants you to get burnt out. But often things can slip in a busy service and they might not be prioritizing your learning or your mental health, I guess. So highlighting that again to people is probably the best way to start getting a little bit of change or a bit more support because they can't help you if they don't know what's wrong necessarily.
SPEAKER_02And senior registers can be really useful in that way, can't they? She says, smiling as over is my senior registrar.
SPEAKER_01It's interesting as I've gone through this so conflict of interest. I have an operational role in Canberra Hospital as the senior registrar. But it's it's a wonderful job, and if anybody has the opportunity to do it in any service, I'd highly recommend it. It's not for everyone, but I've learnt a lot about management and leadership. But it's it's one of those roles where you really learn about the administration of a hospital, and I find that fascinating. And it's certainly one of those things for stage ones, unaccredited registrars locums, that that is so hard to navigate. And like Anua said, every hospital's different, and every state's different, uh, and even within the same hospital, there's a whole lot of different protocols. So the operational senior reg is helpful, but also I'm sure Anua also meant this: just your general senior registrars, your stage threes. If you can get a hold of them, grab on tight and don't let go so you've asked all your questions. Because often they're in the community somewhere doing all their advanced psychotherapy or adult or CAMS training. A lot of them aren't always at the acute hospitals, so you know, if you get a chance, definitely ask them questions because they're wealth of knowledge.
SPEAKER_02And this did come about from me reorganizing peer review at my hospital, which used to happen but fell apart in COVID and just kind of like every uh Tuesday at lunchtime I go to all the various wards and um departments and bully my junior registrals into coming and joining me for lunch that we can have peer review. But yeah, talking and that has I I hope been kind of useful for at least some of them with talking about expectations and and what's going on in the service. So, in looking at the things that are important for junior registrars tonight, I had no idea about how any of the college committee structure worked until really quite recently, and I presume I actually have a terrible idea of how it all works anyway. Ava, while we've got you, do you mind letting everyone know what that looks like, how how and how that's relevant to trainees?
SPEAKER_01Of course. So our our college is a complex beast, as many medical colleges across the world are. I don't think we're particularly different in in many ways. The big difference for the psychiatric college is that we do a lot of work now with trainees. We did before, but I think really after 2021, optimization of the training experience has been a focus for the college. With and without you know, AMC uh conditions withstanding, the college has been very interested to make sure that they produce a program that that trainees enjoy and that uh supervisors can engage in and then actually you know help with. We don't want to burden too, you know, either side too much, although that is always a moving piece, unfortunately. The structure of the college, really, if you think of it as a stage one trainees, you're coming into the college, which is I assume probably what you want me to talk about, you think about the college as having a president, a bit like you think about a hospital having a CEO, but the difference here is that the college has a president which is elected by members, and those are psychiatrists, and then that president becomes what we call president-elect, and they'll be on the college board for two years, and you'll have a president at the same time who was elected two years prior to that. So the board is comprised of between seven and eight members, usually. Um, I think I'm the eighth one at the moment as the appointed director, and before me it was Pramuda Gunaratney, and if anybody's hasn't heard her podcast on Thought Broadcast about her inaugural position, uh, which is the position I was granted very humbly so and I appreciate that, afterwards, and definitely listen to that because she's got an excellent uh take on this position as well. But these board members uh help keep the guidance of the strategic vision of the college afloat. The other members, they're mostly psychiatrists, although there is talk about whether or not other uh expertise would be useful in lived experience and finance and all these other things, and I think that's an evolving discussion for the board and the college as a as a greater piece. So we've got the board, we've got our president, our president-elect. I said before that you think about the president as the CEO, but the difference here is that you can think about it like that, but we also actually have a CEO, so we have a management team. So we've got our a sort of CEO, if you will, of the of the board, of the psychiatrists, and then you've really got the critical head of the team, which is our CEO of the college, the management side, the executive team, all the staff within our wonderful organization that produces a lot of the materials that everyone sees. And um, a lot of people don't necessarily see all the staff in the background who do hundreds of thousands of hours of work on all the committees and all the training programs and the process of accreditation and making sure that we're still functioning and viable and uh working, and that's that's really the key of the work that is in addition to a lot of the other committees where we have a lot of members, psychiatrists, trainees, and affiliates having input and engaging with. So, board. And management underneath the board, then you've got some flagship committees, and I call them flagship because they report directly to the board. Uh, and underneath them they'll have tens of committees, subcommittees, working groups, all these other wonderful people and teams that have input into then helping the board make decisions along with the other executive members of the college as to where we go for whatever the issue is. And those flagship committees are finance and audit, we've got corporate governance and risk. The third one is by national committee for trainees, so BCT. We've also got policy partnership and we've got now the P, so it's triple PC. Apologies, Mark. And uh we've also got the member engagement committee, and there's a whole bunch. Uh the reason those particular committees exist, and I think this is important, I know I'm probably talking a bit much about it, but a lot of the things that stage one trainees, stage two and three will experience, uh, so your accreditation process, oh, I forgot education committee, how dare I? The trainees often in stage one, you won't see any of this stuff, and you probably won't see it really till you become a consultant or or if you join one of these major committees as a trainee rep, which I recommend you you go to, and I can tell you where to go to have a look at that. But all of these things make up the college, they are the reason that we function. Within that structure, there are trainee representatives, so each major committee will have a trainee representative of some kind. Within some of the subcommittees, say for example, uh ADHD Network, Family Violence Network, the Racism Awareness Group, some of the subcommittee certificate groups, so like CL, older persons, they'll all have trainee reps on them. So there's lots of opportunity for trainees to get involved. And part of my role has been to help develop that voice through a committee called the Trainee Advisory Council, which is what I think all stage ones should be aware of, because you don't have to be senior registrar or particularly senior as a registrar in the college to join any of these things. So if you've got an interest, have a go. If you find you don't like it, that's okay. Um, there's lots of other areas uh that you can join in, and then that TAC committee reports to that one of those flagship committees that I talked about, the BCT, which is the Binational Committee for Trainees. And that's a very important committee that reports directly to the board and has a huge voice. And I can say that because I've I've seen it do some amazing things in the last two years under the chairmanship of Nicola and currently Georgia, who are our current chairs, and it's been able to have a huge impact in a positive way for both consultants and registrars on the direction of training and policy and accreditation for the college.
SPEAKER_02I agree, it seems like membership on various committees has been really useful for you, for other people I know. I mean, I that it just gives you a totally different idea of what's going on and the yeah, the attack, both of whom are also who I met at col at Congress this year and had a talk there of getting input from trainees about the exams so that they could take that back. When I was looking around info from the college about trainees and what they needed to know, one of the things was which documents need to be read? Are there documents that need to be read, Anora and Ava, that you're aware of?
SPEAKER_00I mean, there are there are quite a few documents, I think, which can be kind of confusing, especially when you're just starting out. It's overwhelming. I mean, I found probably the most useful documents would be the ones that are aimed at just laying out what requirements there are to progress through the different stages, what sort of work-based assessments you need to do. That's really important. Yeah, I think that's that's still my most important one. They open that one all the time.
SPEAKER_02The stage two one when I was looking at it for preparing this to give us a talk to the earlier trainees last week. Um, the stage two one that they've got is really great.
SPEAKER_03Ava, any any other documents?
SPEAKER_01It's an excellent question. We've actually linked a lot of them now in the training program. The the education team's done a great job at redefining a few of them and going through them. So that a lot of them are listed now on the website when you go under the under the training program in each of the stages. But as Anur said, that that first one is what EPAs do I need to do and and what's actually really critical for stage one. Because as you go through, you get a bit more time and now sit looking at the website, and then you can find other documents as you go on. But the other one I would suggest would be to look at if you go into your in train and then you have a look at the assessments tab, down the bottom it actually comes up with a flow chart that's coloured, and that coloured flow chart down the very bottom, it'll say MCQ and training time and MEQ and CQ and all those sorts of things. That actually gives you a guide as to when things ideally should be done and when the college will start uh trying to help you get those things progressed if you do unfortunately fail one of the examinations. And there's a huge process behind helping people get learning plans and trying to progress those uh particular examinations. But but I quite liked that, that was very helpful. And it says, you know, don't take the MCQ until you're in stage two, for example, or don't take the the CQ until you're in, I think it's halfway through stage stage two. And look at the curriculum, look at the syllabus as well, so you know what to study.
SPEAKER_02Yes. So talking about stage one, I mean that's obviously you've only got a year for it, so you're saying you've got more time to work stuff out afterwards. Things that I would have done differently in stage one is l again looking at those EPAs and kind of working out about which ones needed to be done, but also which ones could be done from the stage twos and would be most useful in getting done. And I think for me, this is the things I would have done in stage one slash stage two differently was getting my ECT one out of the way earlier because a lot of people get it done kind of stage one because you're doing lots of ECT. Whereas I kinda then went into community, did a lot of time doing other stuff and was kind of sort of scrambling to actually get it signed off by the end of stage two. And if you don't get it signed off by the end of stage two, then you don't progress to stage three. So I would tell hold me to get on that earlier. What about you guys? Anything else that you would have done differently in stage one?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think yeah, trying to do as much as you can as early as you can, while keeping in mind that at least for the first six months of stage one, you're still trying to find your feet and figure out what the job actually is and what psychiatry actually is. So not trying to overdo it when you will be learning a lot on the job and just from experience. Something I was really glad I did was getting started on my scholarly project early. When I started off in stage one, one of the stage three trainees said, start this in your first year. It will be really good because a lot of people get stuck with it later on in stage three and it prevents them from getting their fellowship. So if you are in an inpatient unit, that's the perfect time to do some sort of small audit, which you can then write up, even if you write it up in stage two. But you're there, there are patients, there are lots of things you could look at. I think that was really good advice.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's excellent. I guess I can't I can't talk much to the scholarly project because I had I'm exempted from other stuff I've done. I think Ava, you you were in the same boat.
SPEAKER_01No, I got an exemption. I was very lucky. So if you have done any publications prior, talk to your director of training, literally within the first few weeks of starting, to see what the recognised prior learning pathway for you might be, because it does have to be relevant research to psychiatry in some manner. And if you don't get that, do what Anu did and start the research project early. It does appear to be, on looking at at the data, one of the major things that prevents people from following on time. And mostly not because they're for want of putting effort into it, but because ethics takes a long time. You can only submit and I think once every three months, similar to the um long case examination. So if there's a lot of external time barriers that will delay you, so have a have a good think about what you want to do and do something that you can do rather than a big wonderful project. You can do that as a consultant. There's lots of grants that the college gives out for new investigator research, and and there's one even for a funded PhD, uh co-funding for that. So do something as a trainee that you think you can actually get done.
SPEAKER_02Small and manageable, and we'll get it over. Yeah. Yeah. And who are you saying about getting it done in a manageable time? Um, I think one of the other reasons just with people getting the scholarly project delayed, certainly looking at my friends and my colleagues and people I know who've, as you say, had training time delayed because their scholarly projects does the two ones that people I know are like the scholarly project and the the CEQ and the MEQ being the ones that really trick people up. But um, my feel from some people with this the scholarly project being delayed is that I think they they left it a bit late and were focused on other things and then just got a bit burnt out. And then it seems like it becomes this big, insurmountable thing, and you just put it off and put it off and put it off, and then all of a sudden it's delaying you from progressing to being a consultant. So that probably ties in all with what you're saying, with your senior reg saying, start it early. And certainly our stage one trainees are wow, they are impressive and so enthusiastic, and they've got so much energy. And I think it's probably best to harness that early and get that done early before you get a bit more tired and and bogged down by the system. So I think that's really good advice.
SPEAKER_00And something you can also do is to do the project with another person, which is lovely because having internal motivation is hard, but when you're being peer pressured, it's a lot easier. Yeah. I found that very helpful. And then I presume doing that, that's then uh amongst yourselves.
SPEAKER_02Like how did you organize that? I don't know. Did you so you did it with someone else and then you you came up with a project or you reached out to someone for a project? What did it look like?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so we decided we needed to do a project in stage one. I think I had the idea. The other trainee said, Absolutely, and we jumped on and just kind of split things 50-50. And when one of us got a bit lazier, the other one would say, Oh, I've just added to it. Um, so could you maybe add something as well?
SPEAKER_03It was very good. It's nice that you could do that in an encouraging way.
SPEAKER_02All right. Thank you for listening. That's the end of the part one of our podcast about things I wished I'd known earlier in training, especially in for our next episode, which will be part two, focusing on stage two and three trainees as well as exams. We have a number of thank yous uh to do, which I'll do in a second. But I wanted to say is this is coming out in the start of February, and there's a lot of things going on in the trainee space at the moment. Uh that for anyone who needs help at this time, please do reach out to the college so that we can help direct you to the most helpful department or in the right direction for whatever you might need. Trainees can, of course, seek support from their directors of training, their Scott's assistant directors of training, as well as a brand committee for training and TAC representatives. Please also don't hesitate to reach out to the board director, Dr. Abe Carter, who was on this episode. If you feel that it's necessary, she's always ready to help connect you to where the college can help you best. It's a bit of a stressful time, so for quite yourself. I want to say thank you to Endola and Abe for joining me on the podcast today, and to Shady Dave for the music, Sadani Prendis for the Outlook, and uh Nishta Kuma and Jeffroas Pedo for their assistance. We see all find contact details for us on the website. Please reach out, email if you have any questions.