Competence-based training and assessment by portfolio: the health psychology model

All UK postgraduate qualifications in applied areas of psychology will soon be competence-based. This will improve the professional recognition and esteem of applied psychology, and make it easier to transfer qualifications between psychology and other disciplines and between psychology sub-disciplines. However, the changes pose considerable challenges because there is very little clear evidence about the effectiveness of competence-based training and portfolio assessment. Health psychology has led the development of competence-based training in psychology with the ‘stage two’ qualification in health psychology, and this article considers postgraduate health psychology training in the context of what is known about competence-based training and portfolio assessment in professions such as medicine, nursing and education. This raises a number of questions for professional training and qualifications in psychology