Scope of Practice vs. Scope of Employment

Scope of practice, like collaborative practice, is a phrase that we often hear in the health sector. Before I started working at the PEIHSC I had never heard the phrase ‘scope of practice’, but since then it has become part of my daily vocabulary. Scope of practice is something that we will probably visit often here, so I thought I should give you a definition. It is also important to distinguish scope of practice from scope of employment. Here you go:

Scope of Practice: The procedures, actions and processes for which an individual or occupational group has received training/education.

Scope of Employment: The procedures, actions and processes which an individual is authorized to perform in their workplace.

Ideally your scope of practice and scope of employment match, and the tasks that your employer or manager authorizes you to perform are equivalent to your training.

Sounds simple, right? Not so much.

Scope of employment might be different from scope of practice for any number of reasons – regulated health occupations’ scopes of employment are dictated by legislation and job descriptions, while unregulated health occupations’ scopes of employment can be more arbitrary and dependant on the will of the employer. Ensuring that scope of employment and scope of practice match is an important human resources issue; it has a major effect on job satisfaction and certainly influences our ability to recruit and retain health personnel.

That’s it in a nutshell. Feel free to expand on these definitions. We’d also like to hear about your own experiences in the comments section.