This material was presented in the 25th European Congress of Psychiatry which was organised by the European Psychiatry Association in Florence, Italy from 1-4th April 2017. I had access to the material as I attended the full Congress. Please note that this material remains the intellectual property of the European Psychiatry Association and its authors and any citation should include a full reference to it. For more information on the EPA and how to become a member, please visit: http://www.europsy.net/

1. Our model is inspired by the great success of the UK
STudent Audit and Research in Surgery (STARSurg).
Area teams, located in medical schools across the UK, take
part in multi-centre projects. The area teams consist of
medical students, who have the main responsibility for
collecting data, a junior doctor, to supervise the process,
and a consultant, with overall responsibility for patient care.
The data collected is submitted centrally and analysed by
steering team of medical students, junior and senior
doctors.
Figure 1. Our basic structure
The student leads from each site will be named authors in
the published paper. All other students are acknowledged
and have the chance to present the work.
1. Royal College of Psychiatrists. Recruitment strategy 2011-2016. Royal College of Psychiatrists,
updated 2012 [accessed 30 November 2015]. Available at:
http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/pdf/Recruitment%20Strategy%20-%2010092013.pdf.
2. Brown, T. Promoting Recruitment in Psychiatry Committee-Annual Report 2014. Royal College of
Psychiatrists, 2014 [accessed 24 July 2015]. Available at:
http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/pdf/CouncilReport_PRIP_2014.pdf.
3. Chapman SJ, Glasbey JC, Khatri C, Nepogodiev D, Bhangu A, et al. Promoting research and audit at
medical school: evaluating the educational impact of participation in a student-led national
collaborative study. BMC Medical Education, 2015; 15:47 [accessed 30 November 2015]. Available
at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25879617.
4. STARSurg Collaborative. Impact of post-operative non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs on adverse
events after gastrointestinal surgery. British Journal of Surgery, 2014 ;101(11):1413-23 [accessed
30 November 2015]. Available at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25091299.
To develop a national student-led audit and research
programme in order to:
• Improve recruitment into psychiatry
• Change attitudes towards academic psychiatry
• Provide opportunities missing in current medical school
curriculums
• Develop relationships between students and
psychiatrists
Objectives
The UK has longstanding problems with recruitment into
Psychiatry. This is beginning to show signs of improvement
thanks to the 5 year Recruitment Strategy by the Royal
College of Psychiatry (1). In 2014, 87% of CT1 posts were
filled compared to 83% in 2011 (2). However, more still
needs to be done to overcome the barriers to recruitment.
Various initiatives aim to improve psychiatry’s image among
medical students, but few relate to academic psychiatry and
none are student-led. Giving undergraduates the
opportunity to take part in psychiatry research and quality
improvement could increase the number who choose to
enter the profession.
Introduction
We have completed our first audits in Cardiff and
London . We continue work to establish a nation-wide
network of psychiatry consultants, trainees and medical
students. We hope to begin in Edinburgh, Durham,
Belfast and Sheffield in the near future.
Fig 2. Location of sites in UK (indicated by blue circle)
Student feedback indicated a high level of satisfaction
with the project and interest in psychiatry as a future
career.
Methods
References
Discussion
Currently STARSurg is one of a kind, providing those
students with a keen interest in academia the
opportunity to be part of national audits and research in
a supervised setting. The first STARSurg project led to a
significant positive change in student attitudes towards
research in surgery (3, 4) and we hope SPARC can
achieve the same outcomes.
Furthermore, the structure of the mini-teams will act as a
buddy system for those involved. The contact the
medical students and foundation doctors have with
enthusiastic trainees will allow the development of a
nurturing environment, encouraging further recruitment.
This project aims to tackle the recruitment issues in
psychiatry by giving students a chance to take part in
high quality research and audits.
Conclusion
Student Psychiatry Audit and
Research Collaborative (SPARC)
Natalie Ellis,1 Carla-Marie Grubb,1 Munzir Quraishy,1 David Codling,2
Judith Harrison3.
1. Cardiff University Medical School, UK; 2. King’s Health Partners, London, UK; 3. Cardiff
Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics, UK
Results