Professional certification

Professional certification, trade certification, or professional designation, often called simply certification or qualification, is a designation earned by a person to assure qualification to perform a job or task. Many certifications are used as post-nominal letters indicating an earned privilege from an oversight professional body acting to safeguard the public interest.

Overview

Certifications are earned from a professional society. In general, must be renewed periodically, or may be valid for a specific period of time (e.g., the lifetime of the product upon which the individual is certified). As a part of a complete renewal of an individual's certification, it is common for the individual to show evidence of continued learning — often termed continuing education — or earning continuing education units (CEU).

Most certification programs are created, sponsored, or affiliated with professional associations, trade organizations, or IT vendors interested in raising standards. Even those programs completely independent from membership organizations enjoy association support and endorsement.

The growth of certification programs is also a reaction to the changing employment market. Certifications are portable, since they do not depend on one company's definition of a certain job. Certification stands about the resume and the professional reference by being an impartial, third-party endorsement of an individual's professional knowledge and experience. Certification provides an impartial, third-party endorsement of an individual's professional knowledge and experience.^[1]

It is important to note that certifications are usually earned from a professional society or educational institute, not the government. If a demonstration of ability or knowledge is required by law before being allowed to perform a task or job, this is referred to as licensure. In the United States, professional licenses are usually issued by state agencies. The certification assessment process, for some organizations, is very similar or even the same as licensure and may differ only in terms of legal status, while in other organizations, can be quite different and more comprehensive than that of licensure. certification and licensure differ only in terms of legal status.

Certifications are very common in aviation, construction, technology, environment, and other industrial sectors, as well as health care, business and finance. In USA, the Federal Aviation Administration regulates aviator certifications.

The National Organization for Competency Assurance (NOCA) is a US-based organization that helps certification bodies, primarily in health care and related fields, by providing them with information on the latest trends and issues of concern to practitioners and organizations focused on certification, obtaining licenses, and human resource development. Many members of the Association of Test Publishers (ATP) are also certification organizations.

Types of certifications

There are three general types of certification. Listed in order of development level and portability, they are: corporate (internal), product-specific, and profession-wide.

Product-specific certifications are more involved, and are intended to be referenced to a product across all applications. This approach is very prevalent in the information technology (IT) industry, where personnel are certified on a version of software or hardware. This type of certification is portable across locations (for example, different corporations that use that software), but not across other products.

The most general type of certification is profession-wide. Certification in the medical profession is often offered by particular specialties. In order to apply professional standards, increase the level of practice, and possibly protect the public (though this is also the domain of licensure), a professional organization might establish a certification. This is intended to be portable to all places a certified professional might work. Of course, this generalization increases the cost of such a program; the process to establish a legally defensible assessment of an entire profession is very extensive.

Areas of certification

Medicine

Board certification is the process by which a physician in the United States documents by written, practical and/or computer based testing, illustrating a mastery of knowledge and skills that define a particular area of medical specialization. The American Board of Medical Specialties, a not-for-profit organization, assists 24 approved medical specialty boards in the development and use of standards in the ongoing evaluation and certification of physicians.

Medical specialty certification in the United States is a voluntary process. While medical licensure sets the minimum competency requirements to diagnose and treat patients, it is not specialty specific.^[2]Board certification demonstrate a physician’s exceptional expertise in a particular specialty and/or sub-specialty of medical practice.

Patients, physicians, health care providers, insurers and quality organizations regard certification as an important measure of a physician’s knowledge, experience and skills to provide quality health care within a given specialty.

References