Postnominals are the letters placed after a person’s name to indicate education qualifications, title of office, decoration, membership or honour. For example, a Doctor of Philosophy has the postnominals PhD, while a Bachelor of Veterinary Science has the postnominals BVSc.
The authorised award abbreviation of your degree name can be inserted as a postnominal after your surname on items such as business cards, advertising and resumes. There is a strict etiquette on how postnominals are used. If unsure how to write your degrees, diplomas, certificates, then check out the site http://www.usyd.edu.au/staff/styleguide/degrees.shtml.
Other postnominals are authorised by the awarding body and may only be used while membership to this body is current. For example MACVSc denotes the Australian College of Veterinary Scientists membership while the Royal College authorises MRCVSc to be used as a postnominal for those with a current membership.
Members or Fellows of the Australian College of Veterinary Scientists and the Royal College who become unfinancial or who resign from the College are not permitted to append postnominals referring to College qualifications.
So if your membership to a body is not current [have you paid your annual fee?] then you are NOT authorised to use the letters after your name and the unauthorised use of the letters would be considered by the Board to be cause for a complaint to be lodged.
The Board would like to thank the registered practitioners who, when signing certificates, have taken so well to the addition of their registration number following on from their signature. The profession has rapidly and widely adopted this practise. If you haven’t started, the Board asks that you simply write your registration number [with an N at the beginning denoting New South Wales] after your signature when you are signing certificates or documents relying on your position as a registered veterinary practitioner.
This practise will become even more important when National Recognition of Veterinary Registration comes into effect – with the ‘N’ in front; it is your unique nationally recognisable registration number.
Signed by Veterinarian
John Citizen N 9899
