Licensing, Credentialing, Certification, and Privileging Essay

Licensing, Credentialing, Certification, and Privileging
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Licensing, Credentialing, Certification, and Privileging
Licensing, credentialing, certification, and privileging are four terms that are confusing because they mean almost the same things. Regulatory authorities use them to ensure that a practitioner in a given field has the required knowledge, skills as well as the experience to operate professionally. They are mechanisms that help protect the consumers of a particular service or product by ensuring their safety. They were initially adopted by the health and medicine sector and later other fields to ensure the protection of consumers ("Understanding Licensing, Credentialing, Certification, and Privileging (2) | State Public Health | ASTHO", 2020). Medical practitioners are sometimes called to attend to emergencies or even help in helping to scale down the effects of a pandemic like in COVID-19 in other states. The only way to determine their competencies would be by classifying them using the four mechanisms. The four mechanisms are sometimes used interchangeably depending on different regions, but there is a distinction as far as the health sector is concerned.
Licensing
Regulatory bodies give formal recognitions that show that a professional practitioner has gone through and passed all the required qualifications in a professional field as required by the law of a given state. The formal recognition is referred to as licensing. There are specific requirements for one to be licensed (Chahine, 2019). The requirements include education together with training and examination that indicate the competency one has acquired. License is not, however, given directly once as one has to continue with education and training and even re-examination for some cases. In case a person moves to a different country to continue the same profession, the licensing authority will consider many factors which might include retraining to license the person. For example, for a trained ...