Dr Martin Schmidt

Name : Dr Martin Schmidt
Employer : Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Trust
University : University of Stellenbosch
Subject : MBChB
Graduated : 1999

After graduation I completed my house officer training and community service year in my home town of Port Elizabeth in South Africa. During this time I was fortunate to get a six-month post working in psychiatry and I really enjoyed it. I moved to the UK in 2002 and after six months of locums, I started the St George’s psychiatric SHO rotation. On passing my exams in 2005, I left my rotation to take up a one-year research fellow post. I then started my SpR training in May 2006.

Choosing psychiatry

Psychiatry is interesting, exciting and rewarding. It’s a growing area of medicine as new drugs, psychological treatments and special investigations continue to be developed. I like working with a broad range of other professionals such as nurses, social workers, psychologists and occupational therapists, and really getting to know my patients and their families.

Working life

My typical week involves one full day of research, one full day of teaching and course development at the medical school as well as three days of clinical work comprising outpatient assessments, opiate clinics, team meetings and facilitating the in-house junior doctor academic programme. I work regular nineto- five hours apart from on-call shifts, which are one day out of 11, and mainly involve doing Mental Health Act assessments and providing telephone support to juniors. Research tends to become a hobby in this specialty and it can eat into your leisure time, so time management is very important. I try to have a good work/life balance and go out horse riding at least once in the week.

Best and worst

Hour-long assessments can be physically and emotionally draining but the pay off is building effective therapeutic relationships and helping your patients to regain control of their lives.