RCPsych: What Assessments are required to complete Training?

There are various Work Place Based Assessments (WPBAs) that a resident doctor will need to complete within their Portfolio that demonstrate their progress towards the Capabilities required to become a Psychiatrist.

The purpose of WPBA is to provide formative feedback. To gain the full benefit of this formative feedback, trainees should ensure that their assessments take place at regular intervals throughout the period of training. 

All trainees must complete at least one case-focused assessment in the first month of each placement in their training programme.

On a training Portfolio, these appear in the Educational Assessments section of the Portfolio overview page.

What types of Assessments are there?

• Assessment of Clinical Expertise (ACE)
• Addiction ACE
• Case Based Discussion (CbD)
• Addiction Case Based Discussion
• Case-Based Discussion Group Assessment (CBDGA)
• Case Presentation (CP)
• Direct Observation of Non-Clinical Skills (DONCS) 
• Direct Observation of Procedural Skills (DOPS)
• Journal Club Presentation (JCP)
• Mini-ACE
• Psychotherapy Assessment of Clinical Expertise (PACE)
• Structured Assessment of Psychotherapy Activity (SAPA)
• Structured Assessment of Psychotherapy Expertise (SAPE)
• Patient Satisfaction Questionnaire (PSR)

How do I track what Assessments I have done?

Your completed assessments all get tallied on your Portfolio under the Requirements page. This carries a list broken down by stage of training (CT1-3 and ST stages), so that you can easily track your progress and check the gaps.

Click on the Requirements link:

You are taken to this page that tracks your progress across your training to date:

What should Assessments include?

Each assessment form is slightly different, and the resident doctor's part of the form needs to be completed before the Assessment request can be sent as an Invite.

Please refer to College guidance on how to complete these forms to assist your Assessor.

All assessment forms need to be sent to the registered email address of your Assessor, this means that your Assessor needs to let you know the correct email address to send a request to otherwise they will not be able to complete the form for you.

Further information on training and assessments can be found on the Training pages on the RCPsych website and in the Silver Guide here, in Section 13. Recommended numbers of WPBAs to be completed per specialty can be found in Appendix 4.