I am very pleased to welcome you to the Thames Valley School of Psychiatry. Both postgraduate training and living in Thames Valley have so much to offer, and I hope we can help you consider whether this is the School for you.
We are a relatively small School with just over 100 whole time equivalent training places across the core and higher specialty programmes. Consequently, our Training Programme Directors can get to know you well and can advise at every stage of your training to help you make the right choices along the way. We welcome and support Less Than Full Time Trainees in all the psychiatry programmes and ensure that training and other responsibilities or needs can be flexibly met.
Core trainee placements are mainly across Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Berkshire and we have some placements in Milton Keynes. Higher trainee placements are placed mainly in Oxfordshire and Berkshire.
Being so close to world class centres for research and medical education our trainees have access to inspirational people and in turn may become inspirational. Our trainees have had success in the RCPsych Awards in 2014 and 2022 (Core Trainee of the Year) and 2015 (Advanced Trainee of the Year). Our trainers and their teams have been awarded the RCPsych Psychiatric Team of the Year in various categories in both 2017 and 2018 and Psychiatric Educator of the year in 2022.
We welcome and support Academic trainees on the Integrated Academic Training Pathway in the clinical programmes and work closely with the Oxford University Clinical Academic Graduate School.
We are committed to improving the quality of our programmes. We work closely with the provider trusts through their College Tutors and Directors of Medical Education (DMEs) to monitor feedback and act where needed. We also look for opportunities to incorporate new services into our programmes and in the last two years have added more Psychological Medicine, Intellectual Disability and Child and Adolescent posts into core training.
The Oxford Postgraduate Psychiatry Course (previously called the MRCPsych course), hosted by the Oxford University Department of Psychiatry, utilises a range of teaching methods to cover the syllabus. We are hoping that the course builds a firm foundation from which every trainee can grow into the psychiatrist they aspire to be. When trainees register for the course, they can also enjoy access to university of Oxford resources and facilities.
For new trainees we provide a detailed introduction to the training processes at the School Induction. However please do get in touch with us and ask your unanswered questions.
Dr Sanjoo Chengappa, Head of School