Nice topic here. Everything you guys have said about the alliance applies completely to me. I even started a thread on the forum about my frustration with the Alliance some times ago but got minimal response.

http://www.physiobob.com/forum/physi...valuation.html

Nice to see other people having similar issues, it will be nice if we can share ideas and help one another along. I applied for credentialing with the Alliance in November 2010 and got back my first evaluation result in December 2011. Yes, it took 13 months as against the 14-20 weeks the Alliance continues to advertise on the site. The outcome: Not eligible for PLAR! Basically, whoever did my evaluation would not give any credit for most of the courses as they want more detailed information about the courses curriculum and also some clarifications about my transcripts. There are at least 20-30 PTs from my schools currently practising in Canada and at least 5 of those were in my set. The course requirement for the duration of our training was the same, so there is no room for individual differences in the course content and none of the of the previous applicants from my school had experienced this. It is quite baffling that after all the excruciating delay of over year, I was back to where I started from. I had since been in touch with my university and they are in the process of responsibly to what we think is the misunderstanding from the Alliance point of view (fingers crossed)

I am aware that the Alliance changed their standard a couple of years ago to which the Alliance attributes the delay. It would however have been a bit considerate of the Alliance to state clearly what they now require ab-initio rather than make all applicants go through a painful wait only to be told to go get what they now need, which in most cases is not different from what was initially submitted.

It is quite evident that the Alliance in essence has modified the credentialing process to at least a 4 stages for most applicants: Initial Evaluation => Supplementary evaluation => PLAR (if Lucky) => Final Evaluation. The implication of this is that the process has become appallingly slow and out rightly clogged up. What's the price to pay for that? - Wait for it,...........an increased in Evaluation fee. Priceless isn't it! ...and their is of course as stated already, the issue of the evaluation report that you need to complete a separate course to be able to decipher.

It is difficult not to think that there is some self preservation drive at work here. I hope I am wrong, but applicants who have got their evaluation results recently and those who have been following the so called status update on the Alliance website, would realize that most if not all the initial evaluations appear to now being carried out by external assessors, while subsequent (supplementary evaluations and PLAR) are carried out by the Alliance "credentialing officers". It would appear that the credentialing officers keep their workload via the supplematary assessment; hence the applicants inevitably have to pay for the extra cost of to cover the initial assessment carried out by the external assessors.

The Alliance is by all intent and purpose the first point of contact for foreign trained PT regarding PT practices in Canada. I have to say, if first impression is supposed to last longer, I hope in this case that we get over this 'cause this is certainly not in good light.