Prescribing qualifications - facts and figures

Prescribing qualifications

In 2014 renewed prescription of 39 qualifications from 16 institutions.

In 2014 granted prescription for the first time of 2 qualifications from 2 institutions.

In 2014 the turnaround time for applications for the renewal of prescription was an average of 24.3 weeks. In 2013 the average time taken to process an application for the renewal of prescription was 21.5 weeks. The scrutiny of increasingly complex issues arising from applications has meant an increase in the time it takes to process an application.

In 2014 received and processed 36 annual monitoring submissions involving 97 qualifications.

In 2014 the average time taken to process an annual monitoring submission was 4 weeks.

In 2014 13 planning meetings took place at institutions seeking to renew or apply for prescription.

University liaison
In 2014 55 university liaison visits took place, an increase of 8 visits compared to 2013.

38 institutions were visited and a total of more than 3,000 students attended.

17 university liaison visits were for Part 1 groups
16 university liaison visits were for Part 2 groups
22 university liaison visits were for Part 3 groups

The busiest months for visits were February to April and September. These four months accounted for 58% of visits.

Europe
In 2014, 34 European qualifications from 5 member states were notified to the European Commission for review and consideration. ARB is continuing to actively engage in the review of all of these notified qualifications.

*Note: The European Commission temporarily suspended the notification process between January and November 2014 whilst changes were being made to it as a result of revisions to the Qualifications Directive. The revised notification process was put in place in late November 2014 and since then the number of notifications has risen significantly. This substantial increase is also likely to be reflected in the statistics relating to 2015.

Given the suspension of the notification process for the majority of 2014, ARB did not notify any title changes or new qualifications during this period. These will be notified under the revised process during 2015.