Welcome to the EPA 2022 Interactive Programme 

Abstract Body

The transition from being a senior trainee to a qualified specialist presents a variety of challenges under normal circumstances, with the pandemic further disrupting the experience of trainees. This presents an environment where the acquisition of key competencies, both clinical skills and wider capabilities, becomes more demanding for trainees and where training organisers need to re-evaluate their programmes to consider the different opportunities available.

This introduction to the interactive session will consider how the experience in the United Kingdom led to new ways of delivering training, the challenges faced and consider the key skills new specialists need to be effective clinical leaders as they move into a senior role.

Abstract Body

In most academic settings, mentoring students is a part of the activities of the academic staff. Usually, associate professors, assistant professors and professors are required to mentor graduate and postgraduate students, and in some academic settings postgraduate students are required to mentor junior students. In psychiatric clinical settings, mentoring also extends to the supervision and evaluation of clinical work of postgraduate psychiatric trainees, usually for different parts of the psychiatric training. Depending on the local organisation of academic and clinical work, numbers of mentees per one mentor as well as description of activities may vary greatly across regions. Nevertheless, "mentoring" is not systematically taught and evaluated in the majority of systems but is infrequently self-taught. The situation of COVID-19 pandemic, especially in the first wave, has created a new situation which needed quick adaptations in many of the fields of the academic work, mentoring included. In this presentation, these new situations and lessons learnt will be presented and discussed from the point of the academic centre in Croatia.

Abstract Body

Combining clinical and academic roles during psychiatric training can be challenging but equally enriching. However, the Covid-19 pandemic has complicated many aspects of psychiatric training, including changes of service provision, clinical duties, training activities and academic opportunities. In this interactive Workshop session, tips and strategies for balancing academic and clinical responsibilities during psychiatric training will be discussed based on real-life experiences and literature recommendations. The impact of the pandemic and what skills could be useful to flexibly tackle the challenges that come with an ongoing public health crisis while working to satisfy academic and clinical requirements in a set period of time will also be considered. The speaker will also include additional resources to improve such soft skills for participants.

Abstract Body

The ongoing pandemic has brought many changes to the lives of almost all people around the world. Medical professionals have also experienced significant changes at their workplace, with many of them engaged in treating COVID-19 patients instead of working in a field of medicine they have trained to work in. Trainees of all medical specialities have often been the first ones to join the effort in combating the pandemic and psychiatric trainees were no exception. The pandemic has brought their training to a halt and the majority of psychiatric educational activities have initially been postponed or canceled, with clinical rotations between different institutions almost non-existent. In a search for more space to treat COVID-19 patients, psychiatric wards were often the first ones to be repurposed. Epidemiological measures have lowered the number of patients a trainee could see each day and have also made clinical supervision less available. However, the introduction of online communication platforms as a new standard of interaction has helped mitigate many of the issues and enabled resuming most of the educational activities. Since trainees were usually more experienced in online communication than senior doctors, their skills were very valuable in establishing telepsychiatric services. Even though the pandemic has created many obstacles in psychiatric training, it has also proved that training is very much about learning and implementing new skills, as well as adapting to new circumstances.