Research is one of the most attractive fields for young doctors training in psychiatry. The acquisition of research skills by all trainees has been recommended by recent consensus documents on standards of psychiatric training in Europe. However, not always trainees have adequate access to all the phases of a research project during their residencies. Joining professional associations provides opportunities for participating in research activities and establishing networks with other colleagues. In this respect, the European Federation of Psychiatric Trainees (EFPT) in 2008 started a research group with the aim of facilitating trainee-led collaborative studies. Over the years several international research projects on training-related areas have been conducted and published in international peer-reviewed journals. EFPT members can participate to all the phases of the projects as national coordinators and share with other colleagues their research competencies. Furthermore, many EFPT research projects have had the possibility to rely on supervision by internationally renowned experts.

Currently, the topics of the main ongoing studies are: 1) Early career psychiatrists views on psychiatric training (in collaboration with European Psychiatric Association - Early Career Psychiatric Committee); 2) Relationship between trainees and pharmaceutical industries; 3) Child and Adolescent psychiatric training; 4) Trainees’ views on the future of psychiatry and psychiatric training; 5) Trainees’ access to information and use of information technologies during training. In this presentation, issues in research training will be discussed, the EFPT cooperative trainee-led research network will be described and an overview of the results of the ongoing studies will be provided.