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The Northern Region Academic Programme

Gary Cheung

The Director of our Academic Programme is 
Dr Gary Cheung - Gary's email

Attendance at a formal educational course (FEC) throughout the five years of College training is an RANZCP requirement. The Northern Region Training Programme runs teaching programmes for the different years of training. These are on a "day release" system, which means a whole day per week is given over to teaching across two roughly 12-week university-style semesters, with a 2-week mid-semester break and a 6-week mid-year break.

  • Stage 1 (1st year trainees)
  • Stage 2 (2nd and 3rd year trainees)
  • Stage 3 (4th and 5th year trainees)

The 2012 Regulations Syllabuses

The College has coded these with acronyms to indicate which topics are regarded as most important in each Stage of Training. In the versions below the "importance acronyms" are additionally colour-coded to make them easier to use. 

​There isn't a Stage 3 syllabus - the College expects knowledge from the Stage 1 and 2 syllabuses to be deepened and consolidated in Stage 3. 


What else should you read during your training?

Obviously you'll accumulate notes from the teaching sessions, read some of the main journals and take part in Journal Clubs within your DHBs. Teachers of the various sessions may also recommend references or reading material. We have a local dropbox site run by Gary Cheung which stores lots of teaching resources and handouts. Gary will arrange access for any new trainee joining the programme - just email Gary to request this. 

We also have a reading list of reimbursed texts which provides guidance. You can download it here: Reimbursed Expenses. You'll note that there are other reimbursable expenses on this document, e.g. your College fees, some conference or course costs and Advanced Training expenses as well.
Auckland-based trainees please refer to the Reimbursed Expenses document for details. Note the new NRA process for all reimbursement claims, as explained in the NRA Reimbursement Claims Process. Here's a Link to the NRA reimbursement claim forms.
Note that Whangarei trainees apply to the Northland DHB RMO coordinator.
Several of the Australian and NZ Directors of Training have put together an overarching "Reccommended Reading" list which is on the College website here. This is more comprehensive than our local NZ version, but be aware that only the items on our local list have been approved within NZ for reimbursement by the NRA or Northland DHB.

Study groups and pre-exam help

You can arrange with Fiona to access the Training Centre after hours. If your group is meeting during working hours, you'll definitely need to organise this in advance with Fiona to make sure there's a free room.

The Stage 2 and Stage 3 programmes contain some exam-oriented sessions. We run a Mock Written exam twice a year - we only write one Mock paper for the August sitting though as it's a huge undertaking, and we use the same paper again prior to the Feb/March Writtens. There are some pre-exam courses - all are commercially run from Australia and are either face-to-face or on-line, the main two being listed at the end of our 'Reimbursed Expenses' list above. There are also Clinical exam-oriented sessions in the academic programme, including a Mock OSCE twice a year.

Is there any fee for the academic programme?

The Academic Programme is funded partly from HWNZ subsidies paid to the University of Auckland, partly from time and effort donated by psychiatrists and other clinicians around Auckland, and via a little top-up funding from the Auckland and Northland DHBs. Currently, trainees are not charged any fees. Please note that we rely on the goodwill and interest of numerous teachers to make the teaching programme viable, so good attendance and participation is essential.

Attendance at the Teaching Programme and Personalised Study Plans

Attendance is very important (and that includes attendance for Zoom teaching sessions). The DHBs require you to either attend your teaching day (in person or via Zoom), or to be studying according to an Individual Study Plan agreed with Gary, or to be on approved leave/night-duty, on any given teaching day. The College requires regular attendance for at least 75% of the sessions. Teaching during the Covid pandemic might sometimes be via Zoom - you'd be notified about that by email. Here's a handout about how to set up Zoom on your PC or mobile device.

What should you do if you can't attend on a teaching day?
Please let Fiona know by email, as we keep attendance registers for the College and the DHBs. Please note, however, that your consultant being away or asking you to cover, or your workplace being really busy, are not reasons to miss teaching. It's the responsibility of your team manager and consultant to arrange cover as needed and attendance at teaching is both a right and a requirement of the College. Contact your Training Facilitator or DOT if you're having any problems of this sort.

What about trainees in Northland?
Northland trainees can also of course videoconference into teaching sessions using Zoom. If you're new to using Zoom for videoconferencing please read this handout about how to set it up on your PC or mobile device.

How we notify everyone about the academic timetable

We email each class weekly with Zoom dial-in details and session handouts. The details of session schedules, dates and presenters in the academic programme are finalised a while before each teaching semester begins (semesters start about the initial week of March and the last week of July). The programme changes a little each year, according to the availability of presenters, and the Stage 2 and 3 programmes each span a 2-year cycle. As each term progresses the programme often alters slightly. These changes are shown on this website as below, and on the Training Centre noticeboard.
It pays to check this website page BEFORE YOUR TEACHING DAY as updates are often done on Sundays.
If you have any questions or suggestions, please contact Gary Cheung, the Academic Programme Director.


Academic Programme Timetables:
TIMETABLES FOR THE FIRST SEMESTER
 2024  NOW LOADED
VENUE - AT THE GREENLANE TRAINING CENTRE, OR AS NOTIFIED
Remember to R-click and hit refresh or reload on your browser when you have the timetable page in front of you if you last checked the timetables quite recently - otherwise the old version, not the latest update, will come up again. Hitting refresh or reload x 2 also loads the page properly.

Wednesdays: Stage 2 Trainees (2nd & 3rd Years) first semester 2024

Thursdays: Stage 1 Trainees (1st years) first semester 2024

Thursdays: Stage 3 Trainees first semester 2024


Academic Programme Timetables:
TIMETABLES FOR THE SECOND SEMESTER 2024   TO BE ADVISED
VENUE - AT THE GREENLANE TRAINING CENTRE, OR AS NOTIFIED
Remember to R-click and hit refresh or reload on your browser when you have the timetable page in front of you if you last checked the timetables quite recently - otherwise the old version, not the latest update, will come up again. Hitting refresh or reload x 2 also loads the page properly.

Wednesdays: Stage 2 Trainees (2nd & 3rd Years) 2nd semester 2024

Thursdays: Stage 1 Trainees (1st years) 2nd semester 2024

Thursdays: Stage 3 Trainees 2nd semester 2024


 Collated 2017 programmes as a guide to the content of our programme.

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