This report is the responsibility of a Steering Committee set up by the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the Association of University Teachers of Psychiatry and the Association of Psychiatrists in Training. The book explains how a future psychiatrist embarks on a professional education, and the pathway along which educational training proceeds until the completion of specialist training is attained. Although the report deals specifically with the training of a psychiatrist in Britain, it is also presented as a paradigm of current views and practices pertaining to specialist training in all branches of medicine in the United Kingdom.