Evaluation of psychiatry training in India: A survey of young psychiatrists under the aegis of research, education, and training foundation of Indian Psychiatric Society

AIM: The aim of this study is to assess the perception of the young psychiatrists (aged ≤45 years) about their training received during the postgraduate training period. METHODOLOGY: An online E-mail survey using Survey Monkey electronic platform evaluated the perception of 451 psychiatrists about their own perception of training received during the postgraduation period. RESULTS: About two-third (n = 308; 68.3%) of the respondents reported that their overall training was ‘good’ or ’very good’. However, training was rated as poor/very poor in subspecialties of child and adolescent psychiatry and geriatric psychiatry by 26.2% and 26.9% of the participants, respectively. Exposure/training was rated as “poor/very poor” by more than one-fifth of the participants in areas of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation and deep brain stimulation (69.9%), rehabilitation psychiatry (47%), forensic psychiatry (45.5%), psychodynamics (40.5%), neuroimaging (38.1%), psychotherapy (34.8%), orientation to private practice (26.9%), statistics (34.1%), writing skills (24.4%), ethical principles of research (23.5%), women mental health (23.3%), psychosexual medicine (22.7%), and research methodology (21.5%). Regarding academic activities involving writing skills, although majority (72.5%) of the participants reported being involved in writing case reports and half (50.3%) reported involvement in writing original articles, but exposure to writing other types of article was quite low. Training in different types psychotherapies in the form of adequate exposure, carrying out and supervision to different types of psychotherapy was inadequate/low for psychodynamic psychotherapies, rational emotive therapy, dialectical behavior therapy, eclectic psychotherapy, and other kind of therapies. A high proportion of respondents reported having good competence in the administration of modified electroconvulsive therapy and making presentation in academic fora just after passing degree from their institutes and at the time of survey (current competence). When comparisons were done between the different groups of institutes, significant difference was noted across all aspects of training. CONCLUSIONS: The present survey reflects that there is a variation in the psychiatry training in India. Accordingly, it can be said that there is a need to develop a model for competency-based training program at the level of the Indian Psychiatric Society in consonance with training regulatory bodies like the Medical Council of India, which can be implemented across the country to harmonize the training.