Dear Bigkahunaburger,
Great questions.
All BSc Healthcare Audiology courses accredited by the NSHCS are part of the MSC - in this case MSC stands For Modernising Scientific Careers and essentially they are a body that are part of the NHS. All courses at undergraduate level are Practitioner Training Programmes, they have also developed postgraduate training programmes: Scientist Training Programmes, Higher Scientist .....one will lead to a Masters and the other a Doctorate.
DMU was one of the first programmes that offered the PTP (Southampton and Sunderland were the only others) and the course does lead to working as a fully qualified Audiologist - usually band 5. In fact some of the graduates I know have started at Band 6. Last year their student won the national professional body student of the year award and the current chair of the student professional body committee is also a DMU graduate.
The RCCP is a body that has been around before MSC and before AHCS. One could argue that for PTP graduates the RCCP are really now redundant, I guess universities are accredited by them for 'old time sake' but this will change.
Sorry to get technical here, but RCCP is simply a voluntary body, so you can choose to join them or not to work in the NHS, it is not essential. The RCCP are not governed by any NHS body or recommended by any NHS body. As I mention before the AHCS is what the NHSemployers recommend and when you consider that NSHCS accredits the courses, so that graduates can join the AHCS, which is all part of MSC which as I said is NHS backed, there is simply no point in the RCCP, it adds nothing.
Another really important point is that the RCCP is simply a voluntary body that are not really answerable to any government/NHS backed body, the AHCS is an 'accredited' voluntary body and they are governed by the Professional standards Authority, they govern nurses, doctors, social workers....hence DMU has chosen to ensure that its graduates are registered with the highest body relevant to the NHS.
If you do decide to do a masters, I would advise you to do one that allows you to register with a statutory body (as opposed to RCCP, which is simply voluntary), this is far more powerful and your title is protected by law, so doing a Masters at Southampton, Manchester or UCL will allow you to register with the HCPC as 'Clinical Scientist', doing any other Masters in Audiology you really need to think what does it add...
Hope that answers your questions.....
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