As I frequently threaten to change my autosig to 'You don't need to be an AP to get onto training', I couldn't agree more. Over half my training cohort had never had an AP post. These opportunities are doubtless extremely useful in many ways, but they don't always offer lots of skills that are acces...

https://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/policy ... ndards.pdf

Link!

Just for those interested in grade inflation, this documents the movement over the last 20 years nicely, and really focused on the increase to the increase (?!) over the last decade. Echoing the above, as an OU grad myself I an tell you that whilst the course marks are higher in OU (you might receiv...

1.) At the beginning of the month I spent five days as a psychiatric inpatient. I think that short week will be informing my professional life for a long time to come. It was an eye-opening experience. It also left me with a lot of hope. There was one conversation with a psychiatrist and another wi...

Whilst agreeing that it's jolly unlikely that you'd get your Trust to reband, I do feel strongly that there is a continued lack of financial appreciation of the skills and work carried out by relevant degree-holding APs. Miriam is quite right that they won't reband when they can get hundreds of othe...

I think what surprised me about hypnosis was how much in control I felt. I was sure it wouldn't work for me because I'm pretty untrusting and have a cynical avoidance of 'woo'. Nonetheless I felt that I was choosing to allow myself to 'go with it', and I think that made all the difference for me.

I used it once personally for fear of heights which was limiting my rock climbing. It was absolutely excellent despite my raging scepticism and near refusal to even try it out. I expect the lack of regulation means that efficacy is extremely hit and miss.

Being known as trainee, or placement student, suits me just fine. I also think, I have had to record God only known 50 hours of my practice live (120 hours overall) so to say, my name is ............and I am the unqualified seeing you today, doesn't install confidence I don't think I have ever hear...

Fair point! We have it established in our Trust, and whilst I won't work with voluntary APs because I find the system exploitative and geared towards that can afford to be here 9-5pm on a working day, I work with people to help them access research experience because (in my own experience) it can be...

I have so many bits of potential research and no time to write some of them up, so it may be worth approaching psychologists directly and ask whether anyone would supervise you doing a research project in their area not linked to a Masters. As long as people show academic promise (good degree), it m...

I've known plenty of people get onto clinical training one or two years after gaining their GBC qualification, and plenty of those have been after conversions. I'd be very wary of jaded people perpetuating the narrative of how long it takes and how poor your chances are, when plenty of people don't...

I personally wouldn't as I think training is a pretty full-on job by itself, and I'm sure you wouldn't want to be less intellectually present for your potential supervisees than you might usually be. I had asked whether I could continue offering private training and was refused by my training trust....

I tried to set up something similar in my NHS Trust but the Equality and Diversity team felt that it might seem racist as it was aimed at White people so I was advised to not progress this. We were hoping to look at 'Being White in the Helping Professions', which is a truly great book for starting d...

I will respectfully disagree with the PP about the frequency with which the students on the 'research oriented' courses have MSc or PhDs. Whilst some universities cohorts may have a larger number than others of trainees with postgrad qualifications, certainly some of the research oriented courses ha...

Good news both! Well done!