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On completing your Professional Development Scheme profile you will be awarded a membership level. There are 5 tiers of membership level which are determined by scores which are determined based on your academic qualifications, research competencies, professional development activities, courses and qualifications, professional registration and publications.

As you conduct your annual review of your Professional Development Scheme, you may accumulate points through any of these areas which you may have taken.

The Professional Developement Scheme levels are scored as shown in Table 1.

Table 1 - Professional Development Scheme Levels & Scoring


DOWNLOAD TABLE 1 HERE

You can earn points from the following:

  1. Academic qualifications
  2. Research Competencies
  3. Professional development activities
  4. Professional courses and qualifications
  5. Professional registration
  6. Relevant publications

Research Competencies

Research competencies are weighted, determined by whether you have no experience, are trained, have some experience, are capable, are experienced or are highly competent at each task. Table 2 provides the definitions for each of the research competency grades 0 to 5.

Table 2 - Research Competency Scoring


DOWNLOAD TABLE 2 HERE

The number of points awarded for Academic Qualifications and Further Professional Development Activities are shown in Table 3:

Table 3 - Scoring Scheme


DOWNLOAD TABLE 3 HERE

Moderation and Audit

The moderation and auditing process ensures that the Professional Development Scheme is trustworthy and can be relied on as a robust and credible professional development programme.

The Scheme is tightly governed by an oversight committee made up of highly experienced experts from representative countries. This aims to ensure that quality and accuracy are maintained and the point system is both rigorous and appropriate. The committee regularly review the audit system and results as well as approve the point accrual system and management process.

This audit system validates up to 15% of the scheme’s members, in line with other similar systems.  The purpose of the programme’s auditing process is to validate and confirm the qualifications and skills which have been reported in a member’s profile.

As part of this we may occasionally ask for additional documentation to ensure the validity of the system and scoring. Within this we may ask a member for one of more of the following (where applicable and if not already supplied): 

Within this validation mechanism we will ask members for one or more of the following (where applicable and if not already supplied):

  • Employers/supervisor’s contact details
  • Academic and training certificates
  • Other evidence of professional development such as proof of professional registrations and attendance to conferences, training courses, etc.
  • The member’s employer/supervisor will be contacted and asked to verify that the information provided in the member’s profile is true and correct.