Psychological Credentialing...

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473912

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I'm curious how things works at the top psychological level. I have a friend who's in nursing school and at least at the UG level, you get your degree then you can work in the base sense, but if you want to work oncology, you need to test for and get a separate oncology credential. For transport you need critical care transport RN or acute care transport RN. Want to work in an ICU? Need your CCRN credential.

Is that in effect how being a Psychologist works? Do you need a special credential separate from your degree if you want to treat substance abuse? PTSD? Sexual issues? Severe mental illnesses? Personality/developmental/trait testing? Do you take tests on all these separately in order to be able to do them, or is it that once you're a Psychologist, you can do whatever you like?

...and if it is necessary, is there a list of these credentials?

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Depends on where you work really. For example, at my hospital, we have different specialties that they have verified via our training history and certifications. I.e., only a small group of us are permitted to do neuropsychological evaluations. Similar for different EBT's. Out in the real world, you can kind of do what you want, really varies by the state. In some states, if you practice out of your scope and someone files an ethics complaint, you could be in line for some form of punishment or license losing. I.e., don't do neuropsych assessments on a neurological population when you don't know what you are doing.
 
It works a couple of different ways.

In a hospital, there are typically some due diligence hoops to jump through. In some hospitals, the committee will require you to provide either evidence of specialty credentials (e.g., neuropsych). In the VA, there is some specialized credentials for PTSD evals. There's a few more, but you get the gist.

In the private practice world, one can basically do whatever. If they are not trained, the provider is essentially risking a train wreck of a board complaint and lawsuit. APA and ABPP list subspeciality areas.

The one huge historical catch is substance abuse. Somewhere in the 80s, there was some legal push in various licensing boards to only allow people who had a certificate in substance abuse to treat said population. This potentially limited psychologist who had treated substance abuse populations for many years. The APA stepped in and provided a substance abuse certificate.
 
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