Australasian Association and Register of Practicing Nutritionists

Contact

Address: PO Box 518, Glenelg, South Australia, 5045
Phone: (08) 7228 6855
Email: admin@aarpn.com
Website: www.aarpn.com

About

The Australasian Association and Register of Practicing Nutritionists (AARPN) is the peak body allied health association for professional nutritionists, these being degree qualified clinically trained nutritionists, which AARPN accredits through its Certified Practicing Nutritionist (CPN) program.

AARPN is Australia’s first independently mono-modality association exclusively representing and advocating for clinically trained tertiary-level qualified professional nutritionists (Practicing Nutritionists) who practice Clinical Nutrition.

Clinical Nutrition (which AARPN formally terms Nutrition Practice) is grounded in the scientific evidence based application of nutritional interventions and evolved from the merging of medicine and nutrition science in the 1950’s, hence its other name, “Nutritional Medicine”. It includes independent clinical assessment of the client and individualised dietary based modification, and additionally includes the complex prescribing of nutritional supplements to the diet, for the maintenance of health, and in support of the remediation of disease.

Regulation / Accreditation

Principally, AARPN terminologically refers to clinically trained Nutritionists (whose qualifications it has assessed and accepted as meeting AARPN’s training and competency standards) as ‘Certified Practicing Nutritionists’, while the common use term is ‘Clinical Nutritionist’, because the training and practice is in Clinical Nutrition. Through its Certified Practicing Nutritionist (CPN) program, AARPN sets the educational and professional standards for the Practicing Nutritionist profession.

CPN’s bring to the allied health dietary services table a unique underlying clinical examination and complex nutritional medicine prescribing skillset. They are trained to work with both health and disease. They are trained to take a detailed case history, conduct clinical examination, assess for drug-nutrient interaction, independently assess dietary needs, formulate individualised therapeutic goals, design, and implement individualised goal-oriented treatment plans, strategically monitor progress, adjust nutritional therapeutic interventions as needed, and to know when to refer-on to medical professionals.

AARPN currently assesses and accredits clinical degree qualification programs in Clinical Nutrition for CPN recognition free of charge as a service to the profession.