Geoscientist Online

Mary Arbuthnot sat down recently with the Science Council’s Chief Executive Diana Garnham and Deputy Registrar Alisdair Orr to get their perspective on revalidation as it pertains to the Council’s Chartered Scientist (CSci) programme. The full picture, as she found out, is complex and multi-faceted.

Geoscientist Online 4 February 2010

The Science Council was established by Royal Charter in 2003 with the objective to advance science and its applications for public benefit. Under Diana Garnham’s leadership, the Council sees its core remit as helping to build public trust in science and scientists. Garnham, along with her Deputy Registrar Ali Orr, believe their Chartered Scientist designation (CSci) is central to that goal.

As part of its modern forward-looking outlook, the Science Council believes its community of Chartered Scientists should not be (or be perceived as) a cosy, closed community of academics. Instead, CSci strives to be as inclusive as possible across the scientific disciplines, continually challenging the public’s perception of what it means to be a scientist.

At a time when science issues are increasingly urgent and often contentious – whether swine flu, climate change, an ageing population, the list goes on… – the Science Council offers their CSci designation to scientists as an anchor in an often stormy sea of conflicting agendas and public mistrust. At CSci’s heart – arguably the lifeblood that keeps it relevant – is the concept of ongoing revalidation.

Professionalism and trust

“CSci and revalidation are part of the process of addressing public concern in the integrity of science and gaining the trust and respect of your scientific peers” says Garnham. “How can you ask the public to trust scientists without this? The qualities of a professional scientist are embedded in what CSci is – a mark of current competence and commitment to codes of professional conduct and ethics.”

Public trust for most things is in short supply. Just ask Viki Cooke, Chair of Opinion Leader, who ran a recent seminar entitled, Has Trust Gone Bust? “We’ve moved from an age of deference to reference, where people are more likely to trust the advice of their friends and family versus that of experts” says Cooke. “There is a toxic debt of trust and sense of lack of accountability… people are seen to get away with things.” Garnham agrees and wants professional bodies to be more outward-facing. “What do the public need from scientists?” Garnham asks, implying it’s a question not asked enough. “Some people think you can tell the public, ‘we’re clever, trust us’, but behind trust are transparency and accountability.”

Revalidation – the basics

Garnham and Orr believe the Science Council’s Chartered Scientist qualification (CSci) – launched in 2003 and currently approaching 15,000 registrants across 21 Licensed Bodies – is a significant step towards winning back public confidence in the UK’s thousands of science professionals.

A key component of the Chartered Scientist status has always been mandatory revalidation, or the process by which a regulated professional periodically has to demonstrate that he or she remains fit to practise. This ensures professionals don’t become static in their careers by requiring them to practise and record a variety of “continuing professional development”, commonly referred to as CPD.

The Science Council defines CPD as “the means by which professionals maintain, improve and broaden their knowledge and skills, and develop the personal qualities required in their working lives.” What qualifies as CPD is virtually limitless and falls roughly into five broad categories including (1) work based learning; (2) professional activity (3) formal/educational; (4) self-directed learning; and (5) other, i.e. voluntary work.

A little known but surprising piece of trivia is that the NHS is the largest employer of scientists in the UK. Acknowledging their prominence in the regulatory agenda, the Science Council maintains a regulatory interface with the related Health Professions Council, who alone regulates in excess of 200,000 professionals. While accurate numbers don’t exist to show the total number of UK professionals involved in some form of ongoing regulation (CPD, revalidation etc.), looking at HPC’s figures combined with the multitude of other UK professional bodies, it seems to reasonable to speculate this number could easily be over a million.

The Science Council’s synergistic relationship with HPC has resulted in their modelling CSci’s new 2008 CPD standards on HPC’s existing guidelines. These five requirements state that all registrants must:

• Maintain a continuous, up-to-date and accurate record of their CPD
• Demonstrate that their CPD activities are a mixture of learning activities relevant to current or future practice
• Seek to ensure that their CPD has benefited the quality of their practice and;
• Benefited the users of their work
• Present a written profile containing evidence of their CPD on request

In addition to these standards, CSci also outlines five broad areas of competencies that Chartered Scientists are expected to demonstrate through a combination of their knowledge and experience. These include skills like the ability to deal with complex scientific issues and to exercise self-direction and originality in solving problems.

Revalidation – the future

The 2008 Science Council review of CPD requirements led not only to new CPD standards, but also, significantly, a move from a five-year revalidation requirement to annual revalidation phased in by 2011. This means moving forward Chartered Scientists must keep an accurate record of their CPD achievements for submission each year, subject to scrutiny by auditors, in order to remain active on the Register.

This significant policy change is the result of a general consensus by the Science Council’s licensed bodies that a five year gap for revalidation is too long and causes scientists to procrastinate recording their CPD until the last minute. Garnham and Orr hope that a two year transition to annual revalidation will reduce this bottle-neck effect and be ample time to make regular CPD recording both habit-forming and hassle-free. Reassuringly for those who fear a paperwork nightmare ahead, sophisticated technology now exists and is being developed for the professional market which enables registrants to manage their CPD and revalidation online, streamlining the process, making it paperless and much less cumbersome than in years past.

Revalidation – the controversy

But CPD and revalidation are not without controversy. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there has been resistance to change, and a backlash against revalidation among some members of the CSci community who perceive it as time-consuming, ineffective, prone to dishonesty, and condescending.

While acknowledging the validity of their concerns, Orr hopes to slowly win over hearts and minds. “There are misconceptions about CPD, which is evolving” he says. Orr wants Chartered Scientists to develop a more reflective practice through engagement in CPD, which he believes most scientists do on a daily basis without even realising it. “There is a technical and conceptual side to revalidation and CPD” he explains. “The old CPD system relied heavily on the technical “input-based CPD” built around points earned for hours invested attending industry conferences or reading journals, which while useful has its limitations. But now there is a more reflective ‘output-based CPD’ which is about measuring the benefits of CPD to your practice in a much broader way. For example, if you’re a psychologist who goes on a statistics course, you can demonstrate how you’ve used what you’ve learned to benefit your practice, even though statistics isn’t directly related to your field.”

Big brother?

Understandably, increased scrutiny over the auditing period, as well as disciplinary complaints (peers reporting the infractions of their colleagues), can make many Chartered Scientists nervous.

But Orr stresses that the auditing process is not intended to catch hard-working scientists out, but instead to maintain CSci’s integrity and highly regarded reputation. “I want to reassure people that if they’re still in employment it’s probably because they’re valuable and doing CPD without even realising it” he says.

Registrants should be aware that the audit will be peer-reviewed: assessors will always be Chartered Scientists like themselves, not some highly-paid consultant without any knowledge of the field. Once the revalidation transition is complete, a sample audit of 2.5% of registrant’s returns will be scrutinised by a minimum of two trained assessors. They will ask questions like, “Has your CPD been a mixture of different learning activities? Have you shown the benefits to your work? Has the CPD improved the quality of your practice?”

Thankfully for those Chartered Scientists required to submit their CPD log to another registration body, the Science Council has signed up to the Hampton Regulations, which mean CSci’s don’t have to double up on paperwork. The Hampton principles also stipulate that any regulatory audit should be responsive to risk and increased only if a sample group is worse than expected. It will then be up to individual Licensed Bodies to decide if a poor audit is worthy of an internal review.

While there might be a tendency to focus on the negative perceptions of revalidation, Orr believes the positive benefits to the individual far outweigh any potential burden. A 2007 government white paper for the NHS echoes this thinking, stating professional regulation “…should be as much about sustaining, improving and assuring the professional standards of the overwhelming majority of health professionals as it is about identifying and addressing poor practice or bad behaviour in the small minority.” And in a speech to the Science Council Licensed Bodies, Dame Carol Black noted that the role of scientists is not always visible to the public, yet the need for professionalism within science is as great as in any field. On the subject of revalidation, she suggested that reflective practice is crucial to maintaining professionalism and stressed that a good professional wants to continue to be one and is willing to attest to that fact [through the process of revalidation].

Revalidation – what’s in it for me?

CPD as part of the revalidation process diversifies a scientist’s skill-set to meet the challenges of the 21st century business world. This comes at a time when increasingly the science sector is finding “T-Shaped professionals” in short supply. In this analogy, the stem of the letter ‘T’ represents a deep knowledge in a home discipline (whether it be chemistry, mathematics, biology etc.) while the horizontal top of the ‘T’ represents a broad set of transferrable skills, or individuals capable of interacting with and understanding specialists from a wide range of disciplines and functional areas. T-shaped professionals are the 21st Century equivalents of well-educated and well-rounded persons of the Renaissance. They are numerate and adept at technology even as they are good managers, entrepreneurs, problem-solvers and communicators.

In the big picture, CPD helps professionals understand the objectives they are working towards and take ownership of their career progression, which in turn improves their productivity and creativity. Keeping up-to-date in one’s field ultimately means greater job satisfaction and a deeper commitment to one’s company and colleagues. On an individual level, regular tracking of one’s CPD progress isn’t just for revalidation – chances are most scientists will use this data to enhance and keep their CVs, bios, and websites up-to-date too.

Another benefit of CSci is its transferability. Increasingly scientists are involved in interdisciplinary work and don’t identify themselves with just one body of professionals (i.e. engineers, chemists or biologists). Unlike most other chartered designations, if scientists decide to transfer between license bodies their status doesn’t change; they simply take their CSci with them. CSci is the scientific equivalent of the Euro, a currency of professional recognition that transcends the borders of any one discipline and empowers scientists to be collaborative instead of shutting them in their box… whether they are a biologist, food scientist, engineer, or psychologist.