site maintenance: This is going to take a while. Excuse the mess while we update the website.
You are here: /announcements/new-credentials-in-psychology
I've completed two new credentials recently that are viewed as the following for me:
The credential might viewed as a loaded term because of different contexts of existence in professional services. A lot of medical workers still aren't used to the concept of professionals providing services outside of a hospital or clinic. They are used to medical assistants, nurses, and doctors. They're not sure how to become a psychologist or pharmacists. They've never heard of remote workers accessing medical data through regulatory compliance procedures. They may also be fairly new to concepts in remote medicine or phone based assessment.
Many people will not be getting an MD in the near future, even if they are interested, it would take close to 10 years to be ready for work. A Doctor of Psychology is not a credential that is easily issued, even if people are aware of where the schools are and have funding for the program, the school may not be accepting new applicants.
Work that was done by doctors from the 1850s to 1930s can now be done by a medical assistant, although MA is not a proper designation for them. They usually go by CNA for certified nurse assistant and many nurses are now getting Doctorate degrees, although some still have a bit of trouble with some of the computer programs.
The other thing to consider is language. For example, these are some optional credentials for the same set of classes:
The classes that I took for the credential included the following:
The class list can also be displayed like this:
or like this
It seems that, I'm well into my current career path and changing anything too much would be costly on a time schedule. For a short period, the goals were looking at what was available, trying things out, and seeing what still made sense after those tasks were completed. Things that were getting further away from a career trajectory were likely for assessment at the end of the next career schedule.
From a credentialing standpoint, its interesting to see that the goals everyone has been talking about are becoming part of the workplace sooner rather than later. Many counselors have an M.A. degree and a counseling certification is recent. The MFT credential was in the near past and a lot of people have some college and a career internship with an unfinished degree. This makes it difficult to setup a long term functional Psychology Standards Board which most people expect to be done by APA. They are currently certifying Doctor of Psychology degrees although its very hard to get into those programs.
Realistically, the current goal is for new workers to review requirements and work opportunities for a Bachelor of Psychology, and for existing workers to complete in M.A. in Counseling or an MFT. Many people will end up with a non psychology degree and a college certificate or industry certification but this is hoped to be short term and not an ongoing trend. It depends on a lot of things, it could be an additional job role or a medical office qualification.
I'm excited about the next few years in my life. It seems I'll have a new credential every few months and then I'll get to decide if I want to keep studying for a very long time or if I want to find a workplace that is a good fit for my credentials, interests, and provides a good workplace environment.