Assistant Practitioners Scope of Practice

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Assistant PractitionersScope of Practice

• Audrey M Paterson
• Director of Professional Policy
• September 2006

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Aims of Session

• Why Assistant Practitioners?
• Definition
• Scope of Practice principles
• Whats outside their scope of practice
• Areas of contention
• The way forward

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Why Assistant Practitioners?

• Support for effective service delivery, improving
  patient flows and providing more timely services
  without detriment to quality
• Enables skills mix and role developments (of
  support staff, radiographers, radiologists and
  others)
• Provides additional capacity

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Definition

• An Assistant Practitioner is a trained
  individual who performs protocol-limited clinical
  tasks under the direction of a registered
  practitioner
• (adapted from Radiography Skills Mix A report
  on the four tier service delivery model
  Department of Health, June 2003.)

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Scope of Practice principles

• Diversity of roles
• As part of role will perform limited range of
  clinical imaging examinations or treatment
  procedures
• Will work in a team and under supervision of
  registered practitioners, normally radiographers
  but could be radiologists
• Local need will identify specific roles
• But, largely, standard examinations or treatments
  on adult, co-operative patients to whom a
  standard protocol applies

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Whats outside their scope of practice (normally)?

• Mobile radiography remote from main centre
• Fluoroscopy in operating departments and other
  remote locations
• Children

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Areas of contention

• Mobile, theatre and paediatric work!
• Supervision and the responsibilities placed on
  radiographers
• Professional indemnity cover and risk to
  supervisors

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The way forward?

• Accreditation by the Professional Body
• Approval of local variations to the scope of
  practice
• Regulation (probably as a duty of the employer)
  Scotland well ahead of the rest of the UK on this
  matter
• Further development of their scope of practice