New Fellowship Program

A new Fellowship Program is being developed to prepare psychiatrists for a fast-changing world – fostering compassion, cultural safety, and patient-centred care; sharpening skills to evaluate and apply treatments; and building leadership and digital literacy to navigate modern mental health care with confidence and integrity.

This is more than an update. It’s a complete rethink of how we train and assess psychiatrists.

The process of designing the new program will include a comprehensive review of learning outcomes, curriculum, teaching and learning environments, and assessments, guided by three key principles:

A generalist approach to meet workforce needs across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand.
A competency-based medical education framework.
A hybrid assessment model, with both workplace-based assessments and external clinical and written exams.

The goal is to create a program that: 

Strengthens clinical mastery including formulation, evidence-informed reasoning, and therapeutic decision-making across biological, psychological, social, and cultural domains.
Develops compassionate, culturally safe and patient-centred psychiatrists grounded in relational, ethical, and recovery-oriented care.
Equips psychiatrists with future-focused capabilities, including digital and AI literacy and the ability to understand how health systems connect to deliver safe, effective, and personalised care.
Fosters collaborative and adaptive leaders who can navigate complexity, uncertainty, and system-level reform.
Demonstrates clear alignment between curriculum, desired outcomes, and assessment.
Reflects contemporary priorities and harnesses advances in medical education, technology, and cultural safety.
Inspires trust in the quality and relevance of psychiatric training across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, while meeting community and workforce needs.

Impact on the current Fellowship program

While the new program is being designed, the Education Committee will continue to manage and implement quality improvements to the current Fellowship Program, particularly where required for compliance and accreditation. However, where possible, changes will be limited to avoid unnecessary disruption before the new program is implemented.

Taskforce

The New Fellowship Program Taskforce – made up of senior RANZCP Fellows, educational specialists, and external experts – is shaping the vision and guiding principles for the new program as the first step in its development.

Timeline

2026: The Taskforce will deliver a high-level prototype, a conceptual design outlining vision, principles and structure.

Mid-2026: Broad consultation will occur with members and stakeholders.
Post-2026: Development of the curriculum by the Education Committee, the Education Department, and implementation groups.
By 2030: The new Fellowship program is expected to be implemented.

This is a staged process designed to protect trainees while enabling meaningful reform.

Draft prototype

The Taskforce has developed a high-level prototype for broad consultation with members and stakeholders. This prototype outlines the program’s vision, principles, and structure.

This material reflects an early stage of development and is shared to support transparency, engagement, and consultation. The prototype and proposals presented are not final and will continue to be refined through ongoing consultation with members, trainees, people with lived and living experience, First Nations representatives and other stakeholders.

After consultation, detailed development and implementation will be led by the Education Committee and the Dean of Education.

Downloads

NFPT-Draft-Prototype-May-2026 PDF (0.8 MB)

PDF (0.8 MB)

Have your say

Input is actively sought from both members and non-members.

Member feedback

Members can provide feedback via the Consultation Hub. This is a critical window for trainees and Fellows to influence what the future of psychiatric training looks like.

Non-member feedback

Non-members can provide feedback via email to newfellowshipprogram@ranzcp.org

The key questions are:

What form of external clinical examination will best assess competency and safeguard public standards.
In a new program, is there a role for mandatory terms/rotations? To enable breadth of training, could mandatory experiences (measured by EPAs across diverse settings, patient demographics, and areas of practice) provide more flexibility? What guard rails would need to be put in place and why?
What role should advanced training certificates and micro-credentials play in the New Fellowship Program?
If you were to commit to being an Educational Supervisor for the 5 years of a trainee’s journey, what supports, recognition, training, and resourcing would you need to sign up and stay engaged?
If you are in private practice, what would encourage you to take on a trainee? Funding, MBS item numbers, infrastructure (e.g. another consulting room), or other?
Looking at the proposed ‘Our Identity: The Psychiatry Specialist’ in the New Fellowship Program prototype, what (if anything) is missing?
Looking at the proposed prototype, what enablers are needed to ensure end-to-end rural training can be expanded?
Is there anything else you would like to share?

Background

Since the introduction of the current Fellowship Program in 2012, psychiatry and the health system have evolved significantly. COVID-related challenges required rapid changes to training and assessment, and after 13 years, the current program shows some misalignment with modern psychiatric priorities and the expectations of trainees and communities. At the same time, advances in medical education offer opportunities to strengthen outcomes and better prepare psychiatrists for the complexity of contemporary mental health care.

The College recognises that incremental changes to the 2012 Fellowship Program are no longer sufficient. Work is underway to design a new Fellowship Program for implementation by 2030 - one shaped by member input and contemporary priorities.