What do you count as a 'professional' job?

Anyone can call themselves an accountant, it's not a protected job title. It's the "chartered" tag that has protection and requires exams, insurance, cpd, approved experience etc. An unqualified/unregulated accountant isn't a "professional" if people are using quals/regs as the criteria.

Yes, as above, a job requiring a specific professional qualification. Usually resulting in letters after your name, a requirement to register with a professional body and adhere to a written code of professional conduct. Usually also have to complete a set number of hours of continuing professional development. Can be audited to ensure compliance and struck off the register if found to be non compliant.
I am a veterinary nurse and all of the above applies to me.

I was a mortgage adviser and have the CeMAP qualification and had to be registered with the FCA. I'd say that was a profession but obviously not at the level of doctors, lawyers etc.

I'm now a mortgage underwriter, which although I feel is just as much a "professional" job as adviser, I am no required to have CeMAP and am not FCA registered, so I guess I can't call myself a professional anymore?

A job requiring a professional qualification.

It is just a silly, outdated term that smacks of thinking that some jobs are better than others and class obsession...

Plumbers, electricians and hairdressers also need to have qualifications and a professional attitude and many who run their own business will make as much if not more as your average accountant.

You only to look the mental gymnastics that people are using on this thread to suggest nursing is not a profession but being a doctor is.

I think there are not two but three different things here.

There's "being professional" - what everyone should be doing at work regardly of job.

There is "being A professional" which is a narrower definition than the first and includes (to my mind) pretty much anyone who can be struck off (teachers [but not TAs], solicitors [but I assume not legal assistants]<,accountants [but not unqualified accounts assistants], chartered surveyors, nurses [but not HCAs]).

And then there are "the professions" which is a narrower band still but which I struggle to fully define - I am fairly sure this comes back to "traditional" professions only i.e. doctors but not nurses, and lawyers but not teachers.

Amazing how many don't include teachers in their list of professions.

Or nurses, or emergency/ blue light services.

...and if you fail to act within your professional duty outside of work, you can end up in front of the NMC trying to justify it:

Paragraph 15 of the Code states:

"Always offer help if an emergency arises in your practice setting or anywhere else

To achieve this, you must:

15.1 only act in an emergency within the limits of your knowledge and competence

15.2 arrange, wherever possible, for emergency care to be accessed and provided promptly

15.3 take account of your own safety, the safety of others and the availability of other options for providing care"

I consider being a nurse to be a "professional" job.

• It requires a formal training course.

• Once you pass your training course, which is usually a degree with a university, you have to pay to register your registration, with the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), and continue to renew it each year. You are then given a pin number.

• You are required to revalidate with the NMC every 3 years. To do this, you must prove that you have completed at least 35 hours of continued professional development, write 5 reflection and provide 5 pieces of feedback from patients/colleagues.

• The NMC have a code of conduct which you must adhere to.

• You can be held to account by the NMC if you do not act within this code, and lose your pin.

• It's a very varied job, and contrary to what most people seem to think, always involves some autonomy. For example, a ward nurse walks on to a ward at 7pm, there are no doctors around until 8am. They are looking after 14 patients. It's up to the nurse to prioritise their workload, assess patients, escalate to the doctor if appropriate...but I always used to go to the night nurse practioner, who was more helpful than the poor F1 who usually looked knackered and/or terrified.

• You are always a nurse, even when not at work. If you come across a car accident, you have no legal obligation to help, but you do have a professional duty to provide appropriate help, in line with your competence.

There is a correct answer, and people have explained it to you. Many times.

I'm not sure about needing a degree. What about police officers who work up from PC to Chief Superintendent (or whatever the proper title is) or Prison Officer working up to Gov? They wouldn't necessarily have a degree but I guess they need internal qualifications to progress.

I think you need to understand what nurses do and in fact you could argue that as teachers do not pay to join a professional body anymore that nurses are in a profession and teachers are not! Teachers only pay to join a union.

The problem is our society uses the word too lightly and out of its original context

So for the same reason I wouldn’t count a banker as a professional but I would count an accountant. 🤷‍♀️

For me it's a type and level of work, one that requires a level of qualification, either by literal qualifications or by experience that has seen you progress to a more senior role due to your capacity for the work of that industry. It's a job that is more than just doing xyz to follow a procedure, or moving a to b, which doesn't require you to use your own thought and agency. It tends to come with a higher wage than the roles I don't see as professional, so supermarket cashier is not a professional role, neither is lorry driver, or cleaner.

When you have a document that needs ti be signed by a professional

All civil servants can sign these can't they? (From memory for a friend getting citizenship) I don't remember it requiring a certain level so that would cover all levels including administrative assistants?

And I wouldn’t say a police officer is a professional. Yes they’ve had on the job training but there’s no qualification which they have to do before being allowed to be a police officer.

A member of a profession which you need a qualification to do so yes to nurses, allied health professionals as well as lawyers, doctors, teachers.

interestingly though I wouldn’t include tradespeople such as plumbers even though they need to be qualified.

Shocked that you view your whole career as not a professional industry!

Do you not have have yearly training? Nurses pay each year forgotten the name but for their pin and they have numerous training to renew.
Nurses legally hold a duty of care even outside of working hours to the public too.

Professional to me is your job qualification and being on the list to sign a passport it states professions and gives you a list!

I suppose if it's a job where you need some kind of qualification, although I am at a level where they will say "X qualification or similar" because I'm at a leading level now as opposed to doing if that makes sense so whilst they like to have people who know what they're doing in this context heading the teams it's very behaviour orientated so they try to keep the job adverts relatively broad for recruitment. I'd still class myself a professional though, in a professional body, but a very specific one!

What’s the oldest profession in the world quoted as being?

As far as I’m aware a profession is a job which you are specifically trained to do and which no one else is allowed to to ( by law) unless they have that qualification.

When you have a document that needs ti be signed by a professional it can't be sue who works in the office just because they have a qualification!

Being professional as opposed to being an amateur is about being paid.

Being one of the professions is about the professional body and the status it awards, and protects.
And for the most part is part of the class system. Hence dentist is profession, plumbing is a trade.

Then there are professional standards which can be actually determined by a professional body or just bullsshit letting agents spout about cleaning.