Describing Your Credentials and Practice Focus
The College has a published standard outlining use of title and credentials, as well as a position statement on specialty designations. While the documents clarify many questions they also raise new practice questions.The misconduct regulation states the physiotherapist must not use the term or title “specialist” unless they hold a specialty designation which is recognized by the College. They also must not represent qualifications in a manner that is false, misleading, deceptive or unverifiable. The first screening question the physiotherapist must answer when deciding how to present their credentials is who is the primary audience of the description of credentials or practice focus?
An audience that knows how to interpret credentials may be addressed differently from a public audience. Indeed, a professional audience expects clear articulation of your qualifications beyond entry to practice. Examples of situations where the registrant could reasonably expect the audience to interpret information without inferring specialization are curriculum vitae for a job application or in response to a Request for Proposals, publications in peer reviewed or professional journals, presentations to an exclusively professional audience or business cards for professional networking.
When it is clear that the intended audience knows how to interpret credentials and understands that physiotherapy as a profession in Ontario does not have a formal specialization model, registrants may use credentials that may otherwise infer specialization.
However, appropriate steps must be taken to ensure the language used for professional audiences is not transferred to the public. When the public is the primary audience a physiotherapist in a clinical role must consider how an average member of the public will read a description of their credentials, promotion for their practice or a job title and ensure that the public is not inadvertently led to conclude that a registrant’s training or expertise in a defined area is a formal specialty designation.
The College advises registrants to avoid the terms specialist, specialty, expert, expertise, certified or certification, which may be interpreted by the public as "specialist" and "specialization" thereby implying specialty. An exception would be for a Masters or Doctoral degree in physiotherapy from a recognized university where the language is used as conferred in the degree.
Registrants may indicate their practice is “focused on” or with “a special interest in” orthopedic conditions or sports injuries but should avoid using the phrase “practice limited to” or “restricted to” unless this is the exclusive focus of your practice.
