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Tribune News Network
Doha
The Qatar Council for Healthcare Practitioners (QCHP) has updated the list of specialty qualifications for physicians. The list now includes a large number of accredited physicians from many countries across the world.
In a circular on Thursday, the QCHP said the move aims to keep up with regional and international benchmarking in regulatory practice, and to unify the policies and procedures to maintain consistency and objectivity of the registration/licensing process for all healthcare practitioners in Qatar.
The QCHP has also announced the implementation of additional scopes for physicians ” residents, fellows, general practitioners, general practitioners (certain specialty), specialists, associate consultants and consultants.
The QCHP said the updated specialty qualifications list will be implemented in two phases.
In the first phase, QCHP will proceed with the under process evaluation requests with the new requests as per the updated list.
In second phase, physicians who have accomplished their evaluation stage or were licensed prior to the approval of the updated list, can submit"change scope of practice" applications after two months of the issuance of the circular.
The QCHP has urged all physicians who are under the phase two category to continue as per their current scopes.
Later, QCHP will announce an orientation workshop and focus group discussion to address all the details of the updated list.
It said qualifications/certificates not included on the list or from countries other than the list will be evaluated as per the physician evaluation policy/guidelines.
The specialty qualification certificate should be issued by medical colleges/universities, it said.
As per the circular, holders of category 1 certificates can get the specialist title without work experience post qualification degree, unless the required number of years of experience is specified.
They can get the consultant title after completion of one year of work post qualification degree.
Under category 2, physicians can get the specialist title after completion of one year of work experience post qualification degree, unless more experience is specified (If the applicant has less than one year of work experience post qualification degree, they will be eligible for GP/special interest until the required experience is fulfilled and then they can change to specialist scope).
