Protecting the public from COVID-19 has meant a massive reorganisation of daily life for most people, including those working in the NHS. During this period of uncertainty doctoral training in clinical psychology has continued largely without pause. Trainees have continued to balance academic and clinical work, simultaneously meeting assignment deadlines and placement requirements. Prior to COVID-19, it was acknowledged that for many, doctoral training would already have been experienced as a time of increased stress. For current trainees these challenges have been endured in spite of reduced access to social support and many other established coping mechanisms.

Despite these challenges, clinical psychologists trained during COVID-19 are and will be entering the workforce and this is a testament to the hard work of trainees, the staff in universities and on NHS placements which deliver these courses throughout the UK.  For many of these individuals, their experience through training will have been atypical, producing unique opportunities and challenges. This raises at least two issues.

Firstly, staff trained during COVID-19 may have had reduced opportunities to practise specific skills, when compared to what might have typically been offered by their programme. Every recent newly qualified clinical psychologist will have fulfilled the requirements to be eligible to apply for registration with the HCPC and, in many cases, will now have had the additional opportunity to develop unique competencies (such as skills in digital delivery). Nevertheless, individuals might justifiably feel that they would benefit from further opportunities to practise specific skills that were impacted by COVID-19.

Secondly, staff trained during COVID-19 may feel unready for post-qualification employment despite having acquired a broadly equivalent set of experiences. This is, however, not unique to those who have trained during COVID-19. It is a very common experience for newly qualified clinical psychologists, no matter how well prepared by their training, to feel the significant shift in responsibility on qualification. Literature indicates that many trainee and qualified psychological practitioners experience a strong need to meet high, self-imposed standards of professional competency and achievement. Imposter syndrome, often anecdotally observed in the profession, may therefore be more common currently in newly qualified staff due to the atypical context of their training.

At this time, perhaps more so that in the past, we would encourage all supervisors, line managers and heads of service to foster open dialogue with newly qualified staff to help identify areas of their training which they feel may have been affected and to support their continued professional development, through supervision and identifying training opportunities. We would also encourage the utilisation of the unique skill base of newly qualified staff who trained during COVID-19, so they can optimally contribute to service delivery while adjusting to qualified life. Finally, we would like to reassure these staff that, in qualifying, despite recent challenges, they have demonstrated the needed skills to be part of our workforce, and that post-qualification learning and development has always been part of working as a clinical psychologist.