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. Not all certifications that use post-nominal letters are an acknowledgement of educational achievement, or an agency appointed to safeguard the public interest.
A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social processes and behavior. Their work often involves the experimentation, observation, and interpretation of how individuals relate to each other and to their environments.
Regulation and licensure in engineering is established by various jurisdictions of the world to encourage life, public welfare, safety, well-being, then environment and other interests of the general public and to define the licensure process through which an engineer becomes licensed to practice engineering and to provide professional services and products to the public.
A dietitian, medical dietitian, or dietician is an expert in identifying and treating disease-related malnutrition and in conducting medical nutrition therapy, for example designing an enteral tube feeding regimen or mitigating the effects of cancer cachexia. Many dietitians work in hospitals and usually see specific patients where a nutritional assessment and intervention has been requested by a doctor or nurse, for example if a patient has lost their ability to swallow or requires artificial nutrition due to intestinal failure. Dietitians are regulated healthcare professionals licensed to assess, diagnose, and treat such problems. In the United Kingdom, dietitian is a 'protected title', meaning identifying yourself as a dietitian without appropriate education and registration is prohibited by law.
The Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) program is a postgraduate professional certification offered internationally by the America based CFA Institute to investment and financial professionals. The program teaches a wide range of subjects relating to advanced investment analysis—including security analysis, statistics, probability theory, fixed income, derivatives, economics, financial analysis, corporate finance, alternative investments, portfolio management—and provides a generalist knowledge of other areas of finance.
A credential is a piece of any document that details a qualification, competence, or authority issued to an individual by a third party with a relevant or de facto authority or assumed competence to do so.
Certification is part of testing, inspection and certification and the provision by an independent body of written assurance that the product, service or system in question meets specific requirements. It is the formal attestation or confirmation of certain characteristics of an object, person, or organization. This confirmation is often, but not always, provided by some form of external review, education, assessment, or audit. Accreditation is a specific organization's process of certification. According to the U.S. National Council on Measurement in Education, a certification test is a credentialing test used to determine whether individuals are knowledgeable enough in a given occupational area to be labeled "competent to practice" in that area.
Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) is a licensure for mental health professionals in some countries.
An admission to practice law is acquired when a lawyer receives a license to practice law. In jurisdictions with two types of lawyer, as with barristers and solicitors, barristers must gain admission to the bar whereas for solicitors there are distinct practising certificates.
Chiropractic education trains students in chiropractic. The entry criteria, structure, teaching methodology and nature of chiropractic programs offered at chiropractic schools vary considerably around the world. Students are trained in academic areas including scopes of practice, neurology, radiology, microbiology, psychology, ethics, biology, gross anatomy, biochemistry, spinal anatomy and more. Prospective students are also usually trained in clinical nutrition, public health, pediatrics and other health or wellness related areas.
Following is a partial list of professional certifications in financial services, with an overview of the educational and continuing requirements for each; see Professional certification § Accountancy, auditing and finance and Category:Professional certification in finance for all articles. As the field of finance has increased in complexity in recent years, the number of available designations has grown, and, correspondingly, some will have more recognition than others. Note that in the US, many state securities and insurance regulators do not allow financial professionals to use a designation — in particular a "senior" designation — unless it has been accredited by either the American National Standards Institute or the National Commission for Certifying Agencies.
Certified safety professional is a certification offered by the Board of Certified Safety Professionals. The accreditation is used in the United States by the National Commission for Certifying Agencies and internationally by the International Organization for Standardization/International Electrotechnical Commission and 193 Countries Consortium.
The American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) is a nonprofit organization based in the United States that promotes the profession of interior design. It has chapters throughout the United States and Canada. Throughout all of the associations of ASID within the United States and Canada there are many sections within the American Society of Interior Designers, typically in all different states or areas. Each area typically has a certain number of members and they all work together on making Interior Design a better place and to help other Interior Designers within the organization. All of these sections are incorporated in typical and beneficial ways to make the organization a better environment for everyone. In ASID, interior designers will all come together and work together as a team. Some of the most important parts of ASID and being involved are the extended History, being a member and what kind of benefits a person shall get as being part of this organization, learning the policies, some issues that can be come across, and what the foundation is all about. To be a member is it good to be qualified as a professional or student interior designer.
Professional social workers are generally considered those who hold a professional degree in social work. In a number of countries and jurisdictions, registration or licensure of people working as social workers is required and there are mandated qualifications. In other places, the professional association sets academic and experiential requirements for admission to membership.
Professional requirements for architects vary from place to place, but usually consist of three elements: a university degree or advanced education, a period of internship or training in an office, and examination for registration with a jurisdiction.
Human services is an interdisciplinary field of study with the objective of meeting human needs through an applied knowledge base, focusing on prevention as well as remediation of problems, and maintaining a commitment to improving the overall quality of life of service populations. The process involves the study of social technologies, service technologies, and scientific innovations designed to ameliorate problems and enhance the quality of life of individuals, families and communities to improve the delivery of service with better coordination, accessibility and accountability. The mission of human services is to promote a practice that involves simultaneously working at all levels of society in the process of promoting the autonomy of individuals or groups, making informal or formal human services systems more efficient and effective, and advocating for positive social change within society.
The Canadian Registered Safety Professional (CRSP)/ Professionnel en sécurité agréé du Canada (PSAC) is a certification offered by the Board of Canadian Registered Safety Professionals for an Occupational Health and Safety professional. The CRSP/PSAC is accredited in Canada to ISO 17024 by the Standards Council of Canada.
Advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs) are registered nurses with graduate degrees in nursing. APRN roles include: certified nurse midwife, clinical nurse specialist, certified registered nurse anesthetist, and nurse practitioner. APRNs assess, diagnose, manage patient medical problems, order diagnostic tests, and prescribe medications. Rules, regulations, and credentialing for APRNs vary by state. This page outlines the regulatory processes for nurse practitioners in Wisconsin, including education, certification, licensing, and credentialing. Regulatory and credentialing processes are continuously changing, and the information contained on this page is current as of November 2015.
A diver training standard is a document issued by a certification, registration regulation or quality assurance agency, that describes the prerequisites for participation, the aim of the training programme, the specific minimum competences that a candidate must display to be assessed as competent, and the minimum required experience that must be recorded before the candidate can be registered or certified at a specific grade by the agency. A standard is a description of the quality required of a product, or a way of doing something that has usually been derived from the experience of experts in a specific field. The purpose is to provide a reliable method for people to share a reasonably consistent expectation regarding the scope and quality of the product or service. Training standards allow objective comparison between the training provided by various agencies and the competence indicated by certification or registration to the specific standard, though in most cases, training and competence may exceed the minimum requirement much of the time, and variation between newly certified divers can be considerable, partly due to differences in the training, and partly due to qualities of the candidate. Training standards may narrowly prescribe the training, or may concentrate on assessment of exit level competence, and allow recognition of prior learning based on various forms of evidence. To be useful, a training standard must be sufficiently specific to allow agreement on the requirements by most readers reasonably competent in the field, including the instructors, assessors, and learners who must use it, the employers of persons trained, the potential customers, and any quality assurance personnel who may need to enforce it. A training standard may be linked to a code of practice referring to how the training should be carried out.
