I remember when I was at medical school – the CAMHS consultant lecturing us was embarrassed by the 2-year waiting list. It’s now even longer, and I wonder how they feel now. The longer these waiting lists get, the higher the risk of moral injury to staff perpetuating the cycle.
Have no doubt – there is one simple reason we are in this position: poor workforce planning. There are very few child and adolescent psychiatrists – becoming a psychiatrist is hard work, and CAMHS is not an especially attractive field within psychiatry. So we have always suffered from low numbers.
Further, however, a lot of patients sitting on these waitings lists could be seen by a child and adolescent clinical psychologist instead – but again, we have even less of these, due to extremely stringent entry requirements (a doctorate in clinical psychology, which in itself is very competitive to get into – artificially so).
1 comment
I remember when I was at medical school – the CAMHS consultant lecturing us was embarrassed by the 2-year waiting list. It’s now even longer, and I wonder how they feel now. The longer these waiting lists get, the higher the risk of moral injury to staff perpetuating the cycle.
Have no doubt – there is one simple reason we are in this position: poor workforce planning. There are very few child and adolescent psychiatrists – becoming a psychiatrist is hard work, and CAMHS is not an especially attractive field within psychiatry. So we have always suffered from low numbers.
Further, however, a lot of patients sitting on these waitings lists could be seen by a child and adolescent clinical psychologist instead – but again, we have even less of these, due to extremely stringent entry requirements (a doctorate in clinical psychology, which in itself is very competitive to get into – artificially so).
We are sleep walking into these problems.
Comments are closed.