Welcome to the 22nd WCP Congress Program Scheduling

Abstract Body

Introduction: Leadership in healthcare organisations is crucial to continually improve and provide high quality compassionate care. Leadership development and training enables the psychiatrists in developing these essential skills. Focusing on how to enhance leadership development through leadership skills training and experiential learning should be a priority. However, little is known about the extent to which this leadership skills training is available across Europe in the early stage of the career of psychiatrists.

Objectives: To investigate the access to leadership development opportunities among European psychiatric trainees and early career psychiatrists (ECPs) and their perceptions related to leadership skills training.

Methods: Cross-sectional study, using an online survey consisting of multiple-choice questions and free text responses.

Results: Participants from 33 European countries took part in this survey, where the majority were female. More than half were general adult psychiatric trainees and more than a quarter ECPs. More than 60% indicated having no access to leadership skills training within their training program, with only about 10% being satisfied with the training received. About half sought additional training outside their program. All respondents requested training in leadership skills to be included in a psychiatric training program in either optional or mandatory fashion.

Conclusions: Our study provides an overview of important gaps in availability and access to leadership skills training amongst psychiatric trainees and ECPs across Europe. We hope that this study will help inform future actions pertaining to development and improvement of leadership skills training for trainees and ECPs across Europe.

Abstract Body

Leadership is the ability to lead a group of people, and help them accomplish an objective in a cohesive and coherent manner. It involves establishing a clear vision with others, sharing information and resources, and bringing conflicting interests into harmony.

The WHO Psychiatric Training Atlas defines multiple roles of psychiatrists, as clinicians, mental health experts, teachers, researchers, public health specialists and mental health advocates. To fulfil these tasks, early career psychiatrists should acquire skills that will help them to work in and lead multidisciplinary teams, to report their views to professional associations and the media, and to influence policy-makers. If the necessary skills are not gained in the early career years, it will be more difficult to acquire them later.

This presentation will provide a personal account and overview of leadership as an early career psychiatrist, having had the experience of being the President of the European Federation of Psychiatric Trainees, the Chair of the Early Career Psychiatrists Committee of the European Psychiatric Association, and the Chair of the Early Career Psychiatrists Section of the World Psychiatric Association.

It will also discuss an example of a training course on leadership and professional skills for early career psychiatrists, based on the experience of the 23rd European Federation of Psychiatric Trainees (EFPT) Forum in Porto, Portugal in 2015. Views from the participants, organising committee and teaching staff will be summarised. These courses address an important area of learning that will support the work of early career psychiatrists.