HEALTH EDUCATION ENGLAND THAMES VALLEY: Academic Clinical Fellowship in Old Age Psychiatry
(ST1-2)
Academic Clinical Fellowship (ACF) posts are awarded by the NIHR to University/NHS Trust/LETB partnerships nationally through a formula mechanism and by competition. These posts form part of the NIHR Integrated Training Pathway, further details of which can be found on the NIHR TCC website. This post is as a NIHR Integrated Academic Training Post established after national competition to provide academic training for a future clinical scientist in old age psychiatry and will have an NTN A. The ACF post is at ST1 or ST2 level depending on the level of training of the successful candidates. ACFs will also have to apply successfully to Core Training in Oxford through the separate National Recruitment Process. The contract will run to ST3 level inclusive, after which the candidate is expected to apply for a (PhD-) training fellowship, or a clinical lectureship (candidates with PhD or equivalent), or if not successful enter clinical run-through training (ST4-6).
Please note: as stated above for 2017, in addition to the academic interviews, candidates will be required to attend and pass a clinical interview for the specialty/level they are applying to for academic training, if appropriate. Offers made will therefore be conditional upon meeting the required standard in the clinical interview. Please check the FAQs (http://www.oxforddeanery.nhs.uk/pdf/2015 Applicant NIHR ACF FAQs.pdf) on the HETV website for more information.
About Health Education Thames Valley
We are the Local Education and Training Board (LETB) for Thames Valley covering Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire. Our vision is to ensure the delivery of effective workforce planning and excellent education and training to develop a highly capable, flexible and motivated workforce that delivers improvements in health for the population of Thames Valley. Thames Valley LETB is responsible for the training of around 2000 Foundation and Specialty trainees.
Health Education Thames Valley is a relatively small organisation with a defined geographical area, which serves as a single unit of application. In the majority of cases, successful candidates will be asked to indicate their preference of location for either one or two years. Some programmes will require successful candidates to indicate a location and specialty. Future placements will usually be based on individual training and educational needs. Please note that applications are to the Health Education Thames Valley as a whole. This may mean that you may be allocated to any geographic location within the deanery depending on training needs.
The Core Psychiatry Training Programme
The core psychiatry training programme is a three year programme, starting at CT1. During this time, the trainee's performance will be monitored for satisfactory progress and subject to annual reviews in the form of ARCPs. Progression on the programme will be dependent upon these reviews. ACF trainees will need to achieve allclinical and academic competencies to ensure satisfactory annual progression.
The posts on this rotation have been approved for Specialist Training by the GMC. The programme is designed to equip the trainee for Higher Training in their chosen specialty.
The Postgraduate Dean has confirmed that these posts have the necessary educational and staffing approvals.
The local education providers to the Core Programme are from six different Trusts throughout Health Education Thames Valley. The ACF trainees will undertake training in the Oxford region and possibly in other Trusts across Health Education Thames Valley. Training posts are allocated by the Training Programme Director (TPD) for Core Psychiatry Training.
Training objectives:
The main objectives of the programme will be to provide:
i) An entry point for doctors aspiring to a research based career in Psychiatry as well as opportunities to develop the clinical competencies as specified by the relevant curriculum approved by the GMC.
ii) Academic training and support to enable entry into appropriate psychiatric research posts.
Selection Criteria:
The Academic Clinical Fellowship Programmes will offer training to applicants who can demonstrate that they have outstanding potential for development as a clinical academic in psychiatry. Training will be flexible and trainee-centred, as far as possible, with suitable mentoring and supervision to ensure the attainment of both academic and clinical goals. The trainee selected for the Fellowship Programme will be awarded an NTN (a) at the start of the Programme.
Programme Information:
Training is competency-based, with trainees required to demonstrate a range of psychiatric skills, knowledge and attitudes. Most training is achieved through clinical experience undertaken at a variety of six monthly placements. All training placements are arranged via the Training Programme Director (TPD) to ensure that they are appropriate to the learning needs of the trainee.
Each ACF trainee has a nominated Educational Supervisor for clinical competencies in addition to an Academic Supervisor for Academic Competencies over the three years of core training. At each rotation, there is a nominated Clinical Supervisor for six months.
Health Education Thames Valley School of Psychiatry (SoP) monitors the quality of training provided by local education providers to ensure that all posts offer the required training facilities and offer full opportunities for trainees to access local and regional training programmes, such as the Oxford Postgraduate Psychiatry Course (offered in ST1 and ST2) and psychotherapy training. Clinical progress and goals are similar to the rest of the core psychiatry trainees and are in line with requirements of ARCP for the respective year of training.
Teaching:
All posts are supported (during clinical attachments) with a one hour weekly dedicated supervision by your Clinical Supervisor (CS), two monthly sessions with your Educational Supervisor (ES), supervision by a nominated academic mentor and weekly sessions for the local teaching programme, psychotherapy training and the Oxford Postgraduate Psychiatry Course.
Out of hours duties:
All Trusts, across the Deanery, have full shift on-call rota system in place. Frequency of on-call varies depending upon local training scheme and depends upon available trainees in the scheme at the time. All OOH work is supported and supervised by a duty consultant psychiatrist and in some places additionally by on-call higher trainees.
Duties of the Post:
Clinical Component:
The first stage of core specialty training in psychiatry (three years) requires, along with suitable academic and research skills, acquisition of core clinical skills in psychiatry. ST1 usually includes posts in general adult psychiatry and older adult psychiatry, and rotations in subsequent years depend on the future career path, educational needs and preferences of each trainee.
Academic Trainees (ACFs) and the University of Oxford Department of Psychiatry
The purpose of ACF posts is to provide training leading towards an academic career, typically continuing with a Training - (PhD/DPhil) – Fellowship after national and interdisciplinary competition. Such fellowships are primarily offered by the MRC, by certain charities, such as the Wellcome Trust, and also locally in Oxford. They require submission of a project under the supervision of an academic researcher of international standing, with high quality scientific input from one of the basic science departments within Oxford University Medical Sciences Division, as well as usually an interview before a multidisciplinary panel. The ACF training is designed to prepare the candidate for these rigours, as well as continuing clinical training in Psychiatry. Research time is available at 25% of the total training time. For example, in the first year of training (ST1), 25% of time could be allocated for research (29 days per 6-month rotation) and in ST2/3 research time is usually one block of 6 months full-time research, which is approved for training purposes. The remaining three 6-month posts in ST2/3 would full-time clinical. For candidates with a research doctorate (PhD/MD), their research time and supervision will help them to prepare their application for a Clinical Lectureship.
School Lead
The Lead for the Academic trainees within the School is Professor Klaus Ebmeier
(). Professor Ebmeier is also a member of the School Board.
OUCAGS
Academic Trainees automatically become members of the Oxford University Clinical Academic Graduate School (OUCAGS). The lead for this School is Professor Ken Fleming. Denise Best, the Academic School administrator can be contacted by e-mail: .
The Academic School offers academic Trainees significant benefits in terms of interacting with academic trainees from other schools, research based courses etc.
Introduction to the University Department of Psychiatry and available opportunities
The clinical and research environment
The Department of Psychiatry is a clinical department within the Medical Sciences Division of the University of Oxford. Working with its partners in the University and NHS, the Department organises and provides undergraduate teaching for clinical medical students and contributes to pre-clinical education including the provision and supervision of projects within the Final Honours School of the medical course. In addition, the Department conducts research into mental disorders and dementia and provides postgraduate teaching.
The Department is one of the larger UK departments of psychiatry: it has a total of 190 staff, with 36 principal investigators, 20 full professors and 8 associate professors. The total annual turnover was £13.8 million in 2015 (compared to £11.7 million in 2014) and annual research grant income of £7.3 million (£5.8 million in 2014). By comparison, at the time of the last review in 2010, the Department had 130 staff, an annual turnover of £9 million. In the 2014 Research Excellence Framework Oxford Neuroscience, which includes Psychiatry, was rated 1st for research quality in the UK.
The Department’s aim is to deliver world-leading advances in the understanding of mind, brain and behaviour in health and disease, and to translate this into major benefits for health and society. Over the past 5 years, we have taken a number of important steps to achieving this aim by increasing collaboration with NHS partners and across the Division and University, by recruiting world class scientists, and investing in new infrastructure. Our plan for the next 5 years is to build on this platform, increasing the scale, power and impact of our research by attracting major new funding; training, developing and recruiting the best clinical and translational scientists and by further expansion and development of our infrastructure for translational and clinical research.
Building partnerships and collaborations has been a priority over the past 4 years, both within Neurosciences and more generally across the Division and the wider University. Strong working relationships have been strengthened or newly forged with the world class scientific platforms in Oxford: for example the Oxford Centre for Functional MRI of the Brain (FMRIB, Prof Irene Tracey); Structural Genomics Consortium (Professor Chas Bountra); Target Discovery Institute (Professor Peter Ratcliffe) and UK BioBank (Professor Rory Collins).
The success of this approach is evidenced by the REF2014 rating of our research environment (see above) and the number of Wellcome Trust Strategic Awards based in, or strongly linked to, the Department including:
• Wellcome Trust Consortium for Neuroimmunology of Mood Disorders and Alzheimer’s Disease (Lovestone, Cowen)
• Promoting mental health and building resilience in adolescence: investigating mindfulness and attentional control (Williams; Kuyken)
• Collaborative Network for Bipolar Research to Improve Outcomes (ConBRIO; Harrison, Geddes, Harmer, Nobre)
• Sleep & Circadian Neuroscience Institute (SCNi; Goodwin, Harrison, Freeman)
• Integrated computational models for multimodal brain imaging (Woolrich)
• Internet-based training in psychological treatments (Fairburn)
The collaborative approach has also enabled the Department to attract world-class clinical and translational scientists to new senior positions over the past 24 months, augmenting the existing old age psychiatry groups led by Professor Klaus Ebmeier. New professorial appointments include: Professor Kia Nobre to a new statutory Chair of Translational Cognitive Neuroscience (joint with Experimental Psychology); Professor Simon Lovestone as Professor of Translational Neuroscience; Professor John Gallacher as Professor of Cognitive Health; and Professor Noel Buckley as Professor of Neurobiology.
The Department is in a phase of rapid development. Oxford Health Foundation Trust, in close collaboration with the University Department of Psychiatry, have just been awarded one of two national Biomedical Research Centres in Mental Health and Dementia – our research promises to deliver major benefits for patients in the next few years. The ACFs in Psychiatry will be recruited at ST1-2 and receive some of their clinical training in Oxford, but it is likely that they will also spend time with clinical teams in other areas of Health Education Thames Valley.
Structure of the Academic Clinical Fellowship in Psychiatry
ACFs will have blocks of dedicated academic time without service commitments incorporated into their clinical training programme. An academic mentor will be assigned who will meet the trainee on at least a six monthly basis to ensure that mutually agreed academic milestones are being achieved, and a plan put in place to address any deficiencies identified.
Academic milestones will focus on the development of generic research methodologies in Year 1 moving to performing preliminary work in Year 2 that supports the submission of an application for peer-reviewed funding in Year 3, and will be judged against the standards laid out in the 'Gold Guide'. All trainees, including non-academic trainees, are encouraged to identify a research opportunity that they wish to pursue within the Department of Psychiatry. A mentorship programme over the course of the ACF programme, with input from peers, colleagues and senior academics, should maximize trainees’ chances to develop a successful higher degree training fellowship or award. ACF, as run-through trainee, will join the clinical higher specialty training programme in OA Psychiatry at the completion of the post if research funding is not secured right away.
Old Age Psychiatry
Since the establishment of the Oxford Foundation Chair in Old Age Psychiatry (Ebmeier, 2006), we have attracted substantial research funding for Old Age Psychiatry. Our research group has generated well over 1000 papers, books and chapters. We have trained 4 ACFs: one was selected “Royal College of Psychiatry Core Trainee of the Year 2011”, as well as being awarded a 2011 International Psychogeriatric Association (IPA) Junior Research Award. The other has secured funding from the Oxford Health Service Research Fund for his independent research project. Since 2007, we have trained 10 PhD students (6 completed). Dementia research has expanded considerably over the past years with the recruitment of Lovestone, Buckley and Gallacher, who are world leaders in molecular mechanisms and drug discovery (L and B), in clinical studies and biomarkers (L) and in epidemiology and longitudinal cohorts (G). L also has extensive experience in training and development of clinical trainees at the Institute of Psychiatry. Further trainees have joined the programme established by Ebmeier, with nine ACFs and three clinical lecturers (all in old age psychiatry or jointly with general psychiatry) currently appointed to the department.