posted 01-29-2010 12:35 PM            

The examinee was suffering from drug withdrawal at the time of the test (sweating, shaking, in and out of consciousness, etc). What's more, he had been seen by medical personnel and the drug withdrawal was documented before the test. The examinee clearly should not have been tested in these circumstances.

I attempted to stop the examiner, but was rebuked. He actually said "I know I shouldn't do the test, but I need the money."

I tried to get the probation officers and the therapist involved to stop the examination, but they refused, deferring to the "expert" examiner.

After the test, I contacted the APA to file a complaint (something I have never done) but found out that the examiner was not a member of APA. He does, however, have a PCSOT certification issued by the APA.

Sure enough, now there has been a huge federal lawsuit filed about this situation and I am going to be called to testify.

My question is this: even if someone isn't an APA member, why can't the APA investigate allegations of unethical behavior and, if corroborated, revoke someone's PCSOT certification?

If that is somehow not legally possible, maybe the APA should consider only offering PCSOT certification to APA members. Then if the person quits the APA, the certifications would be revoked along with the membership.

May I get some input here? This is a bigger problem that it seems at first blush: most of the bums in this business don't belong to the professional organizations, yet a lot of them are allowed to obtain "specialized" PCSOT certification.

Thanks,

posted 01-29-2010 04:04 PM            

I mean, there is a test administered at the end which conveys to everyone that this is some sort of certification.

Barry, you know as well as I do that this is referred to everywhere as PCSOT certification.

We're dancing around the real point here anyway - I'm concerned that people outside of our profession (therapists, probation, the legal system) will see APA PCSOT certificates and equate that to the APA as a whole.

I know in this case the U.S. attorneys feel that if the APA certified, (or credentialed, designated or acknowledged) this guy as a PCSOT examiner, then the APA is also at risk legally.

My concern is that the APA is putting itself in a bad position here and maybe ought to consider only offering advanced training for APA members.

There are many precedents for only offering advanced training to people who maintain the base certification (example: you can't get an explosives transport certfication if you don't have a CDL).

This case is a done deal. I'm thinking about the future....maybe it's something to consider.

The worst thing we can do is to see a problem and let it get decided for us by court precedent.

[This message has been edited by Lieguy (edited 01-29-2010).]

posted 01-29-2010 04:41 PM            

People shouldn't call it certification since it isn't. I can't help what people call it.That leads to my implied point: since he was never certified, then there is no certification to revoke. (If he's saying he's APA certified, we can have our attorney send him a letter telling him to knock it off, but I think you'll need to write up some background info for the attorney to justify sending it, which means pretty much rehashing your original post.)

posted 01-29-2010 04:47 PM            

Mr. Vaughn already knows about the situation and I think it will be resolved in this situation.

posted 01-31-2010 03:01 PM            

That's the problem with APA certification. We don't carry any legal authority so we can't take any real action when situations such as this one occur. Unlike the bar associations of the legal profession, we can't require membership or take action except to publically censure, suspend or revoke the membership of a member and can't do anything to a non-member.

APA only "certified" that he took and passed the requisite training and test. The people who hired him may require that he have such training or certification or they may not. APA doesn't control that requirement.

I agree that we should put some caveat on the certificate that automatically revokes it upon termination of membership so that those agencies that require APA certification could also require the examiner to show validity of the certificate by showing current membership in the APA.

posted 03-04-2010 09:34 AM            

"A minimum of 40 hours of specialized instruction through PCSOT certification training approved by the APA...under the supervision of a PCSOT certified examiner"

You don't think the APA (as demonstrated by the above language) "certifies" PCSOT examiners? Well, I disagree and so do a number of attorneys in the case I referenced in this post.

I truly think that the APA needs to have their attorney review policy statements before they are published, not committee members.

------------------
Chip Morgan
chip@morganpolygraph.com
(208) 573-9405

posted 03-05-2010 02:22 PM            

------------------
Chip Morgan
chip@morganpolygraph.com
(208) 573-9405

posted 03-10-2010 07:10 PM            

quote:

---

Barry, I understand your comments and I think we are on the same page here, but the APA by-laws do say "certified" in 3.11.2,
"A minimum of 40 hours of specialized instruction through PCSOT certification training approved by the APA...under the supervision of a PCSOT certified examiner"

You don't think the APA (as demonstrated by the above language) "certifies" PCSOT examiners? Well, I disagree and so do a number of attorneys in the case I referenced in this post.

---

Okay, I made a motion to change the language on this last weekend. "Certification" was changed to "recognized" and the "certified" was deleted, I think was the way it went.

I learned that "certified" can mean two different things. A certification can be academic or it can refer to competence. An academic certification (which is kind of what we do) means an organization "certifies" you completed proper training - but not that you practice what you learned. Competency based certification means just that: you've demonstrated your ability to do it correctly (but again, that doesn't mean you will later). My point is we have to define what "is" is, I guess. This never gets any easier.