Can't sleep because of the exams?

This is a common phenomena and pretty much universal. However, once the exams are over things tend to settle down and we get back to normal routine.

But for many of our patients, sleep is a huge problem, either because of their mental illness, or the effects of medication, or both.

We have been running SleepSchool, a full day workshop that speaks to this important topic and made possible by an educational grant from CSL Laboratories. The feedback has been overwhelming after we held successful workshops in Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney. We are planning for more workshops but want to hear about what you’d like to know about sleep Psychiatry. Feel free to talk to Alyssa at the RANZCP conference in Adelaide in 2009. She’ll be based at the CSL stand.

Interestingly, there will be a symposium on sleep disorders as part of the RANCZP program. This symposium has not been organised by CPD Formulations but encompasses the key themes of the SleepSchool series, and you may notice the same speakers. We think it’s a great thing that psychiatrists are talking more about sleep!

Many ways to prepare for college exams

We have been involved with creating programs for psychiatry registrars for 3 years now, and have recently forayed into the world of webcasting.

As always, our marketing and creative director, Alyssa Milton, has led the way with new initiatives to reach time poor, geographically isolated doctors in training, and this new venture has proven to be a great success.

Webcasting offers live streaming so that participants can watch and be truly involved in the teaching session rather than watching a podcast after the event. We used webcasting to broadcast our new “Present to Pass OSCE series”, a series of 4 weeks encompassing 4 clinical areas that can be examined as part of the RANZCP OSCEs .


The actors were brilliant as usual, and took on very challenging roles, including playing patients with neuroleptic malignant syndrome, experiencing the highs of bipolar illness and coming to terms with the loss after a bushfire. Our examiners were experts in their clinical domains, and were able to offer tips for success in the OSCEs and dealing with these conditions in general.

We are planning to run these seminars again in 2009, and were debating which clinical areas should be explored. I’m thinking topics that are hard to access via the standard clinical rotations, i.e the ones that evoke that sinking feeling when we read the scenarios in the sample OSCE stations or on past papers! Forensic? Eating disorders? Old age psychiatry? I will ponder and invite comments.

We are continuing to run Present to Pass® and hope to see participants from NSW and New Zealand in the next few months. We are thrilled about this as the feedback always mentions the positive effect of attending a workshop with registrars from other hospitals and settings.

We hope to continue adding valuable information to our website and including podcasts for downloading, as well as highlights from seminars we have organised.

Welcome to the new CPD Formulations blog!

Come one, come all, we welcome your ideas and thoughts about being a doctor in training or consultant in Australia and abroad!

We are a medical education company designed to create innovative training programs for the medical profession.

I’m Helen Schultz, a psychiatry registrar working in the public hospital system, and I have a keen interest in educating doctors. I completed the RANZCP clinical exams in 2006, and hope to be a consultant by early 2010. Alyssa Milton is our marketing and creative director, responsible for our website and all of our online programs.