A letter to the HPCSA regarding registration categories.

We received this email from Sally John where she indicated that her desire to share her correspondence with the HSPCA. The topic of registration categories was a hot one at this year's PsySSA congress as well as the various AGMs. Sally discusses this as well as an idea to allocate CPD points to pro bono work.

Feel free to discuss the topic in the comments below.

 Hello there

Thanks for your blog.
I just put this letter on which I sent to the HPCSA as I feel very strongly about more psychologists working for pro bono CPD points in the community.

Sally John

A copy of the letter can be read after the break.

27^th September 2011

The HPCSA

Dear Sirs

Re.: Specialization of different categories of psychologists.

I have my concerns about ‘specializing’ the various categories of psychologists. In South Africa, the present psychologists have found themselves working in diverse fields and contributing where they can. I run a psychology department in a semi-government subsidized hospital. I am a counselling psychologist and the interns are all counselling psychologists or registered counsellors. I used to employ clinical psychology interns and have always found that neither category does different work or has different interests or foci of training from each other. I presently place interns including trauma counselor/registered counselor interns into rural areas (hospital clinics where we fly with the Red Cross Air Mercy Service, rural clinics run by NGOs) where they do a generic form of work incorporating all scope of practices. I feel that to create artificial boundaries around the different categories is only going to limit the work that psychologists can do, especially counselling psychologists, and the result is that a vast amount of patients, especially in the poorer and rural sectors, will be deprived of psychological services.

Psychologists in the private sector need to be exposed to the rural sector to see the need there. I wish the HPCSA could see the need there and the difficulty that specialization would cause. If only 10 CPD points could be given to pro bono work in this sector from all categories of psychologists, patients might be offered more service.

I have no solutions to offer to you in connection with the decisions you are proposing to make. I just make a plea that you look at the demographics of need in this country and that you enable all psychologists to be as useful and as versatile as possible. Perhaps in Europe or America, specialization might work, but I feel it would be a shame in our country to limit the scope of psychologists.

Yours faithfully

Mrs. Sally John

Counselling Psychologist