Sir: Caswell & Lowe (Psychiatric Bulletin, February 2000, 24, 64-65) discussed whether part-time training will lead to a part-time consultant post. They concluded that there is little current availability of such posts in their surveyed area which resulted in fully trained psychiatrists considering working in non-career grade posts. With such a recruitment problem in psychiatry this seems a great waste.

Part-time trainees wishing to work part-time as consultants need to take the matter into their own hands and publicise themselves to the trusts in which they would like to work. This strategy has recently worked successfully for me in gaining a part-time consultant post.

The high number of consultant vacancies in psychiatry means that those managing the services need to think imaginatively about using people trained to consultant level in a flexible way. But they need to know that they exist, so that jobs can be changed to suit the needs of the prospective candidate. Job-sharing is often proposed, but does not seem to be a good solution for unfilled consultant posts. There are many problems in job-sharing partnerships - both for the job-share partners and their employing trusts.

Part-time trainees in psychiatry are consistently shown in surveys to be highly motivated and qualified people who need urgently to be included in workforce planning.