This book, aimed at early career Psychiatrists and trainees, opens by asking you the question ‘What does it take to be a Psychiatrist today’? and while this, of course, depends on what type of a Psychiatrist you wish to be, by the end of it you will certainly have a sense of what you could do to guide your career in the direction you would like it to take. Written in a colloquial style, it contains information that will not, I imagine, be found easily elsewhere. Instead this book reads like the dispensations of an experienced senior reg or consultant giving you their hard-earned advice for you to consider.

With 21 chapters written by 50 authors, many of whom are senior trainees or early career consultants themselves, the book is structured over three sections that broadly follow the career pathway from trainee to consultant. The first gives an overview of psychiatry training in European countries and in the United States. The subsequent chapters are written about key areas of focus for psychiatry trainees namely developing skills in psychotherapy, working in community psychiatry, writing up a paper and developing research skills among others. The middle section relates to the transition into the role of Consultant Psychiatrist with focus on opportunities in public and private sectors, professionalism, ethics, and leadership and management. The final section describes continuing professional development and gives an account of the role of psychiatry associations. Exclusive to the focus on personal career development there are several chapters that deal with several disparate issues affecting psychiatry today, for example, recruitment of trainees, the importance of phenomenological psychopathology and psychiatry in the developing world. While this can unbalance the stated aims of the book to be a ‘survival guide to help you through the first years of practicing psychiatry’, chapters such as these are provocative and may spur you on to read up on such important areas.

I found this book to be most useful and would have no hesitation in recommending it to fellow trainees in psychiatry, especially those at the start of their training. For many trainees, it can come as a surprise when they realise that more is expected of them in order to continue onto higher specialist training, apart from their hard-earned membership qualification. Therefore, becoming proficient in areas like research and psychotherapy early on, as this book clearly highlights, is essential (of course developing such proficiencies is dependent on the opportunities available to the trainee as well). However, the emphasis, as it should be, is not to learn these skills to simply get onto the next step, it is to develop as a Psychiatrist. While entire books and courses are written about Membership examinations whose curriculum and questions populate the workspace and mind of every BST, I don’t think I ever came across information on, for example, the symptoms and signs of burnout for doctors in psychiatry or what it is like becoming a consultant for the first time, both of which are given their own chapter in this book.

The writing style throughout is characterised by clarity and in tackling the speedbumps one encounters along the career path, advice is dispensed with sheer practicality. For example, a chapter on developing a research career in the absence of a funded programme contains a list of research grants to apply for funding sources, many of which one may not have been aware of.

What constitutes success in Psychiatry is a debate in itself. This book does not answer such a question for you, it gives you the information and tools so that you can decide what you would be most successful at; and if you have no clue about any of them, it will make you think more about them so that you can decide. All trainees should pick up a copy of this relatively short but immensely useful book. It is long overdue for trainees in psychiatry.