The concept of crisis intervention and the various types of services available for dealing with crises affecting the individual or the family have been well set out in the publication from Napsbury Hospital. We would agree with Ratna's statement in that publication that crisis intervention is not only a system of delivering emergency psychiatric care, but also a set of techniques which utilizes a crisis to therapeutic advantage. It was with this in mind that a pilot study was launched in April 1979 for a crisis intervention service in Tunbridge Wells, Kent.

Interest in the process of formulating a psychiatric case continues unabated (Greenberg et al, 1982). We report the findings of a brief survey conducted in an attempt to begin publicizing examiners' expectations in this contentious area.

Candidates from our Institution have not been uniformly successful in passing the MRCPsych Examination. It was therefore decided to offer some specific guidance to our trainees who were about to take Part II, in the form of a short ‘revision’ course incorporating mock clinical and viva examinations. A small working party was set up to organize this.