Dr. Miriam Kennedy:

There are some places where there is a quicker route. As was said, for undergraduates, it can be four or five years. In other jurisdictions, one can be a psychiatrist in four to six years. Our point there is twofold. Once people qualify as interns they are working within the system and they contribute quite significantly in terms of our higher specialist training, doing research or doing projects, service management, etc. We would make a strong case for the benefit of being a medic, a doctor, first because a person's mind, body and brain are all the one.

Also, our training programme over the last five years in psychiatry has brought in psychological services. Many people will need psychological treatments or they will need their team to be trained like nurses, in solution-focused and other types of psychotherapist, which ultimately benefits our patients. That is incredibly important because not everybody will need a psychologist. Perhaps a complex presentation will need a psychologist. There are very many mental illnesses where psychological interventions are needed and that is where we have training in that now in social.

We would not be for shortening it because it shows a commitment in that regard, even though there are models and there was some concern in another jurisdiction, where everything was problem solving, four years, etc., and then through in three years, that there were gaps and the gaps were related to the medical knowledge of the presentations.