Fellow 3-yearly accreditation fee £60
If you are an Advanced Specialist Member and have made significant contributions to occupational health over a period of at least ten years, you could be nominated to become a Fellow. You could be an academic, consultant or occupational health practitioner.
Quick eligibility check:
- I have made significant contributions to occupational health nursing for at least 10 years.
- I have had senior professional responsibility for at least 5 years.
- I have at least an advanced level of proficiency for 80% of the competencies in the FOHN Professional Competency Guidance and an expert level of proficiency for several areas.
- I can find 3 referees, of whom at least 1 is a Fellow of the FOHN or FOHN Board member, and at least 1 works outside my organisation.
- I can provide (or have recently provided) an up-to-date Continuous Professional Development (CPD) record as part of my application.
- I can provide my NMC Reflective Discussion document
Key
Professional competencies
A checklist of professional competencies has been developed by FOHN as a guide to expected competencies for an occupational health nurse specialist. It can be used in conjunction with a proficiency scale to show progress in breadth and depth of skills and expertise as your career progresses.
The checklist forms part of the application for Fellowship to help demonstrate breadth (through the number) and depth (through levels of proficiency) of claimed competencies. If you are planning to upgrade to Fellowship, it might help you to complete the checklist as soon as you can. This will allow you to see any areas where you might need to fill any gaps. Use the checklist as a framework to identify your experience and highlight any pieces of supporting evidence you are providing with your application.
Note: You must have at least an advanced proficiency level (4) in 80% of the competencies in the FOHN Professional Competency Checklist and higher expert proficiency levels (5) in several areas of competency.
Your experience
If you are not already an Advanced Specialist Member of the FOHN, your application must show evidence of your professional experience. You must provide at least one piece of evidence for each of the 4 areas of competency on the Professional Competency Checklist.
Your professional responsibility
You should be able to demonstrate senior professional responsibility for at least 5 years covering a range of skills and abilities that are an integral part of professional and good quality occupational health nursing practice, for example:
- Project management, team or capability group leadership within an occupational health context.
- Significant financial or management responsibility within an occupational health context.
- In an academic environment, demonstration of your leading role in delivering, managing and developing approved occupational health courses.
- Taking the lead in research programmes, supported by resulting evidence of publications and presentations.
- The active promotion, development and growth of occupational health within an organisation, to ensure it is an integral part of processes, products and activities.
- The planning of occupational health contributions to programmes and the control of their progress and outcome, by the integration of professional and appropriate inputs to multidisciplinary programmes.
- Being sufficiently familiar with the technical language and jargon used by those with different professional backgrounds and training disciplines within an organisation, to improve dialogues, understanding and the acceptance of occupational health.
- The development and mentoring of an occupational health team working with or for you.
- The development of occupational health standards and specifications.
Your referees
Your referees must know you well enough to form a robust opinion of your professional work and status. Their reports are an important part of your application and must show strong support for it.
Assessment of your application
Two suitably qualified members of the Faculty’s Accreditation Board (FAB) will assess your application. They might ask you to submit additional information if there are any areas which need clarification.
The application form will request, and the assessors will examine:
- Your detailed job history.
- The details of your work and responsibilities over the last 10 years.
- Any awards and recognition you have received.
- Your CPD record.
- Your list of academic publications, published reports and books (if you have one).
They will look for service to the profession of occupational health and significant contributions to practice. You will need to support your claim for eligibility with a 250-word statement, bringing your application together into a sound argument. This should not just be a list of the contents of your application but a coherent commentary that paints a picture of your professional development and achievements.
During the assessment of your application, all assessors follow specific written guidance and complete a checklist to ensure they work consistently, and we maintain a clear record of your application. You should read these too before you apply to understand what the assessors are looking for, how they do their assessment, and to give yourself the best chance of success.
Simple Pricing
You will pay an annual membership fee of £25. Plus we will invoice you for £60 when you go through accreditation.
Ready to apply?
If you think you’re ready to apply, this is what you’ll need to do.
- Complete the Professional Competency Checklist. Download the checklist (here)
- Create your logbook entries. Download the logbook template(here)
- Gather the evidence to back up your logbook entries, competency checklist and NMC Revalidation CPD and practice hours.
- Fill in an application form. Fellow application form (here)
- Email the application form to us at membership@fohn.org.uk , together with the Checklist, logbook, evidence and statement.
- Contact your referee and ask them to prepare and send us their referee reports. Download the report template and example (template – example) to send to them.
- Pay the £25 membership fee via the online system and £60 application fee when you receive our invoice. (here)