SCOTTISH GENERAL-PRACTICE REGISTRARS - THEIR VIEWS ON PSYCHOTHERAPY TRAINING

Background. Psychological problems constitute between 10% and 30% of g eneral practice workload. In 1993, me Royal Colleges of General Practi tioners and Psychiatrists published guidelines on the psychiatric comp onent of vocational training for general practice, recognizing the nee d for training in the psychological aspects of patient care and knowle dge of the psychotherapies. Little is known as to how much these guide lines have been followed. Aim. To determine Scottish general practice registrars' views on whether the above training objectives had been me t. Method. An anonymous self-report questionnaire was sent to all gene ral practice registrars in west and south-east Scotland one month befo re the end of their trainee year with a 95% response rate. This provid ed basic descriptive information on the population surveyed and their attitudes to psychotherapy training. Results. Altogether, 53% had spen t time in psychiatry and half of these had had access to a consultant psychotherapist, but only 9% had been involved in using a psychologica l approach to treatment. A total of 51% disagreed that they had had en ough psychotherapy experience, and 44% did not feel confident in asses sing patients for psychotherapy, 15% saying that lack of knowledge wou ld prevent them from referring patients. Of the whole sample, 88% felt that further psychotherapy training would be helpful. Conclusion. The majority of general practice registrars in Scotland did not feel that training objectives had been met regarding the attainment of skills i n the psychotherapies.