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This question gets asked by two very different people. Patients want to know whether the clinician in front of them is allowed to diagnose. Clinicians want to know whether they could be that person.
The answer is the same for both, and it is less restrictive than most people assume.
ADHD diagnosis is governed by competence, not by job title. The guideline names roles as examples, not as a closed list.
NICE guideline NG87 sets out who should make an ADHD diagnosis in the UK. It names a specialist psychiatrist, a paediatrician, or another appropriately qualified healthcare professional with training and expertise in diagnosing ADHD.
That final clause does most of the work. It is the reason ADHD assessment in the UK is not restricted to two professions, and it is why services look at your training record rather than only at your registration.
The third group has grown quickly, because the first two cannot meet demand. That is the honest commercial and clinical context behind this whole question.
There is no national register of ADHD assessors and no single accreditation body that issues a licence. In practice, a service satisfying itself that you are appropriately qualified is looking for four things.
Our ADHD Assessor Training covers the third of those. The fourth is what the Observership Academy exists for.
Yes, where the nurse holds relevant clinical experience and specific ADHD diagnostic training, and where the employing service has agreed the scope of the role. Specialist ADHD nurses now carry a large share of assessment work in both NHS and independent services.
The constraint is rarely the registration. It is whether the training and the supervised practice are in place, and whether the service has written the role down properly.
Yes, on the same basis. Clinical, counselling and educational psychologists registered with the HCPC routinely assess ADHD, and are often the strongest assessors on the differential - distinguishing ADHD from trauma, autism or a learning difficulty.
What a psychologist cannot do is prescribe. That matters for how a service is staffed, and it is why assessment and prescribing are usually split between two people.
Pharmacist independent prescribers are increasingly central to ADHD medication work, but diagnostic assessment is a different competence and a different training route. Some pharmacists do both; most focus on titration and monitoring.
If prescribing rather than diagnosing is the goal, the route runs through the V300 and then ADHD-specific prescribing training.
This trips up a lot of people. Being qualified to diagnose ADHD does not permit you to prescribe for it, and holding a prescribing qualification does not make you an assessor.
They are separate competences with separate training. Plenty of clinicians hold one and not the other, and plenty of roles only require one.
A GP can recognise that ADHD is likely, make a referral and later prescribe under a shared care agreement. What a GP does not usually do is make the diagnosis itself, because the guideline expects specialist training and expertise for that step.
Patients frequently read that as their GP refusing to help. It is usually the opposite.
In the absence of a national register, each service sets its own bar and writes it into a scope-of-practice document. Some accept a one-day course plus supervision; others want a longer portfolio and observed assessments before you work unsupervised.
If you are planning training, ask the service you want to work for what they require before you book anything. It is a short conversation that saves a lot of money.
Diagnostic training is mostly about evidence and structure rather than theory: applying the DSM-5 criteria to a real history, running a structured interview, taking a collateral history, recording a mental state examination, and writing a report that holds up when someone else reads it.
Our guide to which ADHD course to take sets out the options if you are not sure where you fit.
Our ADHD Assessor Training is CPD-certified and delivered live online, with a named clinician leading the room. The Observership Academy adds observed practice with real patients.
See dates and book on the ADHD Assessor Training page, or email info@globaladhdnetwork.com and we will tell you honestly whether it is the right course for your role.
ADHD can be diagnosed in the UK by a specialist psychiatrist, a paediatrician, or any appropriately qualified healthcare professional with training and expertise in ADHD. Registration gets you to the door; training and supervised practice get you through it.
If you hold a relevant registration and want to move into assessment work, talk to us about what your target service is likely to ask for before you spend anything on training.
