Management and leadership are two of the many duties of a doctor, and this is no less the case for the psychiatrist. Although more senior management experience is more relevant to trainees towards the end of their training, every trainee's portfolio should contain an element of management experience.

The portfolio is competency driven and although a list of experience shows that trainees are engaging in some level of management experience, it does not demonstrate performance. Leadership occurs in many situations, so time should be taken to think creatively, within reason, about what experience is sought and how it is presented.

What to communicate about management experience and skills

The training portfolio will benefit from a description of what actually occurred and what the developmental issues are. It may be helpful to consider the following questions in brief:

1. • What does the curriculum require in terms of management competencies?

2. • What was your role and who formed part of the team?

3. • What were the challenges or issues?

4. • What were the barriers to good team working?

5. • How were setbacks overcome?

6. • What skills were needed to be successful?

7. • What were the developmental needs following this experience?

8. • What type of feedback was given and what did it say?

Consider the following list of experience that a trainee might present.

1. Doctors in training representative for trainees CT1–3.

2. Rota coordinator.

3. Observer at consultant meetings.

As experience all these are perfectly good examples but on their own they do not detail experience and development. Contrast this list with Box 10.1 and how the brief paragraph covers the prompts suggested. Presenting experience in this way and linking that to reflective notes and key learning points makes this part of the portfolio much more informative and developmental. Other methods of demonstrating leadership experience might include the following.

1. • A personal statement concerning the doctor's role as a manager, describing individual skills and how these have been integrated by reflective practice.

2. • It may be worthwhile adding a reflective note about each experience further capitalising on this part of skills and experience in a manner appropriate to the portfolio. This could be done in a similar way as suggested with WPBAs (see Chapter 5).