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professions
This page considers the shape of Australian official registration
of professions - such as doctors and lawyers - and people
who have a quasi-official role, eg ministers of religion
who act as marriage registrants.
It covers -
introduction
[under development]
Certification of particular practitioners (eg of medical
practitioners and lawyers by professional bodies on behalf
of governments) and of activities (eg driver licencing)
is similarly a foundation of civil society - individuals
are authorised to perform particular roles and held responsible
for that performance - and a mechanism for raising revenue.
Registers include -
medical
practitioners
There is currently no comprehensive Australia-wide register
of medical practitioners, with each state and the major
territories having statutory responsibility to register
medical practitioners (through individual medical registration
boards). There is no unitary practitioner identifier other
than the 'provider number' issued under the national health
insurance scheme.
They have adopted uniform minimum requirements for initial
registration, with two registration categories -
- Registration
Without Conditions (fully portable across states and
territories, with a practitioner who has full or unconditional
registration in one state or territory being eligible
for registration to practise in another state/territory)
-
Registration With Conditions (portability subject to
approval of each jurisdiction's medical board)
In 2006 the governments announced plans for establishment
of an Australian Index of Medical Practitioners (AIMP),
a national index of practitioners registered to practise
medicine. Doctors will be given a unique registration
number that enables them to practise across jurisdictions
without additional paper-work. The AIMP will not replace
each registration board's register but will instead "virtually
coordinate" those discrete databases. The expectation
is that it will enable community access to accurate and
current information about individual medical practitioners.
other
health care providers
Each state/territory maintains separate certification
arrangements and registers for other health service providers.
In New South Wales for example these include the -
- Psychologists
Registration Board of New South Wales
-
Chiropractors Registration Board NSW
- Dental
Technicians Registration Board
-
Nurses Registration Board
-
New South Wales Optical Dispensers Licensing Board
-
Osteopaths Registration Board NSW
-
Board of Optometrical Registration NSW
-
New South Wales Physiotherapists Registration Board
-
Podiatrists Registration Board
The
Australian legal profession is discussed here.
studies
For a broader perspective see Harold Perkin's The
Rise of Professional Society: England since 1880
(London: Routledge 1989) and The Third Revolution:
Professional Elites in the Modern World (London:
Routledge 1996),
Burton Bledstein's The Culture of Professionalism:
The Middle Class and the Development of Higher Education
in America (New York: Norton, 1976), Eliot Freidson's
Professional Powers: A Study of the Institutionalization
of Formal Knowledge (Chicago: Uni of Chicago Press
1986), W J Reader's Professional Men: The Rise of
the Professional Classes in Nineteenth-Century England
(New York: Basic 1966), Charles McClelland's The German
Experience of Professionalization: Modern Learned Professions
& their Organizations from the Early Nineteenth Century
to the Hitler Era (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press
1991), German Professions 1800-1950 (New York:
Oxford Uni Press 1990) edited by Geoffrey Cocks &
Konrad Jarausch, Professions & The French State
(Philadelphia: Uni of Pennsylvania Press 1984) edited
by Gerald Geison, Russell Smith's Medical Discipline:
The Professional Conduct Jurisdiction of the General Medical
Council 1858-1990 (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1994)
and other works highlighted in the discussion of elites
here.
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