The Psychiatry Early Experience Programme (PEEP) is a long-standing scheme, collaboratively run by GKT School of Medical Education and SLaM Trust, which pairs medical students with core psychiatry trainees for clinical shadowing, mentoring and educational talks for the duration of their degree. We aimed to understand the motives of first year students signing up to PEEP and compare these to their feedback after one year.

Before the 2015 and 2016 academic years we administered an online survey to 159 medical students interested in joining PEEP, asking the free-text questions: “What do you most hope to get out of PEEP?”, and “Why are you interested in the PEEP programme?”. Eighty students were selected for enrollment and of these, sixty who participated in one year of the programme completed a follow-up survey, including the question “What have you taken away from your experience of PEEP so far?”. Authors conducted thematic analysis of the qualitative responses at both timepoints, identifying common themes and seeking feedback from third raters when conflicts emerged.

Themes identified in responses to the baseline survey fell into two categories: psychiatry-related and non-psychiatry-related. The three most common psychiatry-related themes, were: Better understanding of the specialty (n = 67), Role of a psychiatrist (n = 16) and Evaluating interest/suitability to the specialty (n = 7). The four most common non-psychiatry-related themes were: Obtaining clinical experience (n = 70), Insight into the role of a junior doctor (n = 22) and to the Training pathway (n = 10) and Developing clinical and communication skills (n = 14).

Themes identified in responses to the follow-up survey closely reflected those from the baseline survey. Students commonly expressed that they gained a better understanding of what psychiatry is and what working in psychiatry entails (n = 24) and explored their interest in pursuing a career in psychiatry (n = 10). Similarly, they valued the ability to gain early clinical experience (n = 16) and to develop their clinical and communication skills (n = 9).

The results support the value of PEEP in providing opportunities for medical students to better understand what psychiatry is and explore their interest in the specialty. PEEP is also meeting students’ expectations outside of the realm of psychiatry by facilitating early clinical experience and the development of clinical and communication skills which are less available for medical students in their pre-clinical years.

Further collection and analysis of annual quantitative and qualitative data will ensure continuous evaluation and tailoring of the scheme to meet both students’ expectations and its purpose to foster interest in psychiatry.