I have two weeks left of being a trainee clinical psychologist and a doctoral student, after 10 years at university. I’m finding myself both excited and apprehensive about this impending transition to post-doctoral life as a clinical psychologist, especially as it feels a bit like the proverbial cotton wool has been unwrapped from around me and the safety net of my status as a student is being whipped away.
My situation is slightly unusual, however, as I’ve never been a full-time, university based postgrad and have either studied part-time at a distance from my institution or as part of professional training where you’re mostly on placement in the NHS with blocks of study time at the university, usually once a month at most. So, for me this transition seems to have happened more gradually, as I have spent less and less time at the university and essentially feel like I’ve been working in a job. The fact that I have increasingly become more autonomous in my job and have been working to a Band 7 NHS KSF job profile for the past two years (the same as a newly qualified clinical psychologist who has followed the standard 3 year doctoral route) has made this change to qualified status much more gradual and hopefully smooth. It makes me wonder what it is like for the majority of trainee practitioner psychologists who follow the standard 3 year doctoral route, which seems like it would be much more intense and a bit of a shock to the system to suddenly go from trainee to qualified ‘overnight’.
From my own network of friends and colleagues who have recently completed PhDs, it seems that many people go on to work in the department where they were a postgraduate. They may have already been working in a teaching, lecturing or demonstrator post but I do wonder about how people manage the increase in teaching and lecturing hours, responsibility for writing and assessing course material, and the supervision of students. How this role transitions is managed by employers, managers, mentors and supervisors of new post-docs really seems to vary from place to place from speaking to people.
These musings, combined with me experiencing withdrawal symptoms following my departure from PsyPAG, got me thinking about developing some sort of peer support network for psychologists early on in their careers (post-docs and also newly qualified practitioner psychologists) that would be akin to a ‘grown up’ version of PsyPAG! So, with a little help from my friends (sorry, too cheesy I know…), that’s what I’ve set up: the Early Career Psychologist Network. The idea is that the ECPsych Network will provide a central hub where people early on in their post-postgrad careers can find news and information about funding opportunities, jobs, grants, awards, bursaries and also find out about skill and career development and share issues that affect people at this particular stage and hopefully get some advice and support.
So far we’ve set up an ECPsych Twitter feed and a Facebook page so that people can connect and follow our information feeds. We also have a website that is in development and we’re in the process of formulating a blog that will probably feature guest authors, in addition to hopefully hosting a regular #ECPsych Twitter chat slot and arranging some events to network in person.
Do you have any ideas of how we might use this network to support those early on in their career as an academic / practitioner psychologist?
What would have helped you?
What do you need that you’re not getting?
Please do get in touch with any ideas or feedback or if you want to get involved, we look forward to hearing from you!
fleurzel 