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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the stressors involved in pre-qualification clinical psychology as reported by a sample of the UK trainee clinical psychologists. The main coping strategies reported by the trainees are also explored.

One-to-one interviews were conducted with 15 trainee clinical psychologists using qualitative research methods. Themes were established using the main principles of thematic analysis.

Three themes were identified that described the pressures involved in applying to the course, the support networks available to trainees, and the commonalities in their personal history, experiences and self-reported personality characteristics.

It is important to investigate the sources of stress and coping strategies in trainees to help them cope more effectively. The findings of the study are discussed within the context of clinical psychology training.

Applications for clinical psychology training far outstrip places and relevant work experience is key. Paid opportunities are limited and therefore many choose volunteering, with well-connected graduates faring best. To promote equal opportunities a coordinated psychology graduate voluntary internship programme was established in a National Health Service Trust in the South of England. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate intern and supervisor outcomes, equality of access and adherence to governance standards.

Three cohorts of interns, unappointed applicants and supervisors were surveyed. Between 2013 and 2016, 270 psychology graduates applied, 119 were recruited and 151 either refused a place or were unsuccessful. In total, 91 supervisors provided service-level feedback.

Interns and applicants were predominantly young, able-bodied white British heterosexual females. Demographic profiles were similar and broadly representative of psychology graduates nationally. While fewer were from Black and Ethnic Minority backgrounds, proportions were greater than the local population. Participants were more socioeconomically privileged than undergraduates nationally. The scheme was popular and well governed according to interns and supervisors. Post-internship employment prospects were improved, with most interns gaining paid mental health roles like assistant psychologist. Most supervisors commented on the positive contribution made by interns to service outcomes.

This study makes a significant contribution to the literature on voluntary psychology graduate posts, an area under-researched until now. Our results suggest that a coordinated, transparent approach can benefit both interns and services by minimising exploitation and maximising developmental opportunities for the new graduate. The programme makes an important contribution to addressing inequalities experienced by psychology graduates attempting to enter mental health careers.

Previous research suggests that service user and carer involvement (SUCI) in clinical psychology training may have an impact. The purpose of this study was to develop a validated questionnaire to enable trainee clinical psychologists to rate this.

A collaborative project was carried out with service users and carers and trainee clinical psychologists. The principles of questionnaire design were followed. The authors developed and validated a trainee self-report questionnaire, based on focus groups and relevant literature indicating potential impacts of involvement on practice. A draft 60-item version was piloted with 15 trainee clinical psychologists. Then, 133 trainees from 22 UK clinical psychology courses completed it (estimated response rate of 13.2%). The sample was representative of UK trainees in gender and ethnicity, but slightly older.

The principal component analysis produced a 36-item questionnaire with four factors: human communication, carer perspectives, empathy and challenging/changing. The questionnaire showed good internal consistency and test-retest reliability. Stakeholder consultation suggested face and content validity and there was some indication of construct validity.

The project has resulted in a usable co-produced questionnaire, which is now available to clinical psychology courses to assess the self-reported impact of SUCI in training, and which may also be used in future research.

Assessment of complex clinical skills and abilities is a challenge in mental health education. In the present study, an objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) was adapted to psychology and implemented in a Master in Psychology program. The purpose of the present study was to examine aspects of validity of this OSCE.

A total of 55 students enrolled in the Master in the Psychology program at Umeå University, Sweden, participated in two OSCE occasions. In addition to OSCE data, questionnaires were administered immediately after the OSCE to students (n = 18) and examiners (n = 13) to examine their perceptions of the OSCE.

The results provided support for different aspects of validity. The level of internal consistency was close to acceptable, and there was a good correspondence between global ratings and checklist scores for many stations. However, adding an additional category to the global rating scale and reviewing some of the station checklists might improve the assessment further. The present cut-score of the OSCE was comparable to a cut-score set by the borderline regression model. In general, students and examiners perceived the OSCE as a high-quality examination, although examiners raised some issues that could improve the OSCE further.

In conclusion, OSCE is a promising assessment in psychology, both from a psychometric perspective and from a test-taker and examiner perspective. The present study is an important contribution to the field as there are only a few examples where OSCE has been used in clinical psychology, and to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to evaluate the validity of such an assessment.

Research in industrial and organizational psychology demonstrates that the regulation of negative emotions in response to both organizational stressors and interpersonal workplace interactions can result in functional and dysfunctional outcomes (Côté, 2005; Diefendorff, Richard, & Yang, 2008). Research on the regulation of negative emotions has additionally been conducted in social psychology, developmental psychology, neuropsychology, health psychology, and clinical psychology. A close reading of this broader literature, however, reveals that the conceptualization and use of the term “emotion regulation” varies within each research field as well as across these fields. The main focus of our chapter is to make sense of the term “emotion regulation” in the workplace by considering its use across a broad range of psychology disciplines. We then develop an overarching theoretical framework using disambiguating terminology to highlight what we argue are the important constructs involved in the process of intrapersonal emotion generation, emotional experience regulation, and emotional expression regulation in the workplace (e.g., emotional intelligence, emotion regulation strategies, emotion expression displays). We anticipate this chapter will enable researchers and industrial and organizational psychologists to identify the conditions under which functional regulation outcomes are more likely to occur and then build interventions around these findings.

This paper aims to explore whether a United Kingdom (UK) clinical psychology training programme (the programme) was effective in producing graduates who are confident in leadership, within the context of the National Health Service and reflecting the British Psychological Society’s views of leadership.

Mixed methods design surveys were administered to prospective-, current- and alumni trainee clinical psychologists on the programme, enquiring about their view of leadership, motivation to lead (MtL) and aspects of the course that are helpful and which need further development. Data collected from 92 individuals were analysed using content and thematic analysis (TA).

From the TA, three themes were identified concerning the meaning of leadership as follows: professional identity, Improving the quality of services (team; organisations and wider context), professional skills. Overall, participants thought leadership was important to the role of a clinical psychologist, with prospective trainees reporting that the desire to develop as leaders influenced their decision to apply to the programme. Moreover, participants felt confident in leadership skills and that the training programme helped develop their leadership skills, with the alumni participants demonstrating a greater MtL. Placements, group study and specific modules were identified as contributing to the development of their leadership skills, but participants felt more teaching on leadership is needed. Recommendations have been suggested to improve the development of leadership skills on the programme.

The research was undertaken on a small cohort of trainees based in the UK.

Participants were motivated to become clinical leaders but this motivation needed to be nurtured and developed particularly through structured placement and teaching experience.

This service evaluation is the only audit of the leadership of the programme and the findings will contribute to the existing body of reviews in this area.

National policies suggest that service users and carers should be involved in health care planning and delivery. Initiatives to involve service users and carers within the education of mental health professionals have been reported. However, there has been no initiative to involve such individuals in the selection of clinical psychologists. This study examines the experiences of service users, carers and members of the Doctorate of Clinical Psychology programme in the implementation of a new interview task for the selection of trainee clinical psychologists at the University of Surrey. This new initiative involves service users, carers and staff members working collaboratively to assess candidates in a discussion based task. The study employed two focus groups, one pre‐selection and one post‐selection, and used interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) to evaluate participants' expectations and experiences of the task. The findings suggest that there was genuine collaboration between service users, carers and programme team members that was deeply engrained in the programme ethos and was a step forward in normalising and empowering service users and their carers. Interviewers felt that this task helped select a different calibre of applicants who had an awareness of the perspective of service users and carers and were able to communicate effectively. Interviewers viewed applicants who were able to disclose and take ownership of their views favourably. The introduction of a successful new interview task at Surrey has set a marker for future collaboration with service users and carers in selection, which will have implications for other doctorate programmes in clinical psychology and the broader health care training community.

Extant literature exploring service user (SU) involvement in clinical psychology training has been limited by its sampling from singular training programmes and its restricted application of psychological theory. This research seeks to counter limitations by exploring SUs’ experiences across multiple clinical psychology training programmes in the UK and by deductively applying psychological theory relating to power, recovery, identity and group development.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 participants. A deductive thematic analysis was used to analyse qualitative data.

Five main themes were identified: environment determines sense of safety; meeting challenges; sense of purpose, worth and value; the person you see now is not the person I was; and wanting to break the glass ceiling.

Carers are underrepresented and the sample does not contain SUs who were no longer involved in training.

It is important that the environment fosters psychological safety for SUs, via positive and supportive relationships with trainees and staff, with SUs being treated as equals and financially reimbursed as such. SUs and professionals need to explore managing and sharing power to enable SUs to feel valued and to reap benefits from involvement, including developing a positive sense of identity.

The research is part of the early literature exploring SUs’ experiences of involvement in clinical psychology training and is, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the first to explore the personal effects of involvement across multiple programmes.

There is a gap in the literature regarding the experiences of newly qualified Clinical Psychologists (NQCPs) working within Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) in the National Health Service (NHS). This paper aims to explore three aspects of newly qualified Clinical Psychologists’ experiences: their transition and development; working in multi-disciplinary teams located in large organisations; and support and coping in the role.

Seven participants each engaged in one semi-structured interview, and an interpretative phenomenological analysis was conducted.

Three super-ordinate themes emerged from the analysis: A big jump, the transition from trainee to NQCP; The support of home comforts, old and new; and Acknowledging and desiring ongoing development.

Implications and recommendations for both Clinical Psychology training programmes and NHS employers are discussed, to support the development and wellbeing of this staff group, and in turn the clinical population they serve. These include gradually increasing caseloads on training, a staggered workload at the outset of the transition, and CAMHS teams ensuring appropriate supervision for NQCPs.

The purpose of this paper is to profile the research activity, research skills and enablers of research of clinical psychologists in the Republic of Ireland.

All clinical psychologists working in the Health Service Executive (HSE) or HSE-funded organisations were requested to complete an online survey examining their research capacity. A total of 170 clinical psychologists completed the survey, with an estimated response rate of 20-25 per cent.

Within the preceding two years, 60 per cent (n=102) of the clinical psychologists sampled had engaged in research. These research active participants were involved with a median of three projects and the majority spent 10 per cent or less of their work time engaged in research. The weakest research skills of research active and research inactive participants were applying for research funding and publishing research. Research active participants indicated a reliance on their own personal motivation to maintain their research activity and indicated a need for more protected time for research.

Managers within the health service need to be incentivised to allocate protected work time for research that directly contributes to service provision. Greater collaboration with academic institutions is needed with regard to targeting the research skills development of clinical psychologists, as well as identifying opportunities for collaborative research.

This is the first survey to profile the research activity and skills of clinical psychologists in the Republic of Ireland and provides an evidence base for future research capacity development.