Despite efforts to unify psychiatric education among European member countries, there are still considerable variations between national training programmes. To ensure equivalence of training standards the current tendency of recommended guidelines and reports is steering psychiatric training towards becoming more competency focused.

The research group of the European Federation of Psychiatric Trainees (EFPT) conducted a multi-national study on postgraduate psychiatry training. The aims are to assess the psychiatric trainees’ experiences and opinions on their national training and assessment methods in respect to the Union européenne des médecins spécialistes (UEMS) 2009 competencies framework.

This study surveyed 745 psychiatric trainees from 10 EFPT member countries using a questionnaire designed specifically for assessing this issue.

In this sample, the majority are aware of having a competency based training programme but 86.5% are poorly acquainted with the UEMS competencies framework. All key competencies were rated as being important but not all as being relevant in the assessment process. One's level of preparedness and the degree of education one's receives during their training differs from one competency to another. Trainees who aren’t satisfied with their national training would be in favour of taking an end of training Pan-European exam which differs from the one's that are satisfied and wouldn’t be interested in undergoing this assessment method.

This sample isn’t fully acquainted with the competency-based concept for postgraduate training. The ones satisfied with their postgraduate psychiatric education seem to be less inclined to take an end of training Pan European exam.

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.