Professional Practice and Research Literacy
Professional standards
Know the scope of practice, supervision expectations, continuing education, and documentation standards. Records should be accurate, timely, and objective, capturing the counselling contract, information given, client decisions, and follow-up plan. Know when to consult or refer outside one's competence, and understand the role of certification and licensure in your jurisdiction.
Research literacy
Candidates should read studies critically: study design (cohort, case-control, randomized), measures of association (odds ratio, relative risk), measures of diagnostic performance (sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive value), and the difference between statistical and clinical significance. Understand that positive predictive value depends on prevalence, so a test's performance in a high-risk clinic may not transfer to the general population. Recognize bias sources: selection, ascertainment, recall, and survivorship.
Traps
Questions often test confusing relative risk with absolute risk, ignoring confidence intervals, or treating a screening study's detection rate as diagnostic accuracy. Another trap is assuming a published variant association is clinically actionable before replication and guideline endorsement.
Rule of thumb
Before acting on a study, ask: who was studied, what was the outcome, what was the comparator, and how precise is the estimate? Example: a test with 99% sensitivity and 99% specificity in a high-prevalence cohort can still have a modest positive predictive value in a low-prevalence population, so prevalence must be stated alongside performance.