Shared Scope of Practice and Restricted Activities

British Columbia has a shared scope of practice and restricted activities model for regulated health professions under the Health Professions Act (HPA). This regulatory model was designed to enable inter-professional practice and team-based care, and to balance public safety and consumer choice.

The regulatory model is characterized by 2 essential elements: Scope of Practice Statements and Restricted Activities, which are specified in health profession regulations under the HPA.

Scope of Practice Statements set out broadly what each regulated health profession may do. These statements are not exhaustive lists of every service the profession may provide, nor do they exclude other regulated professions or unregulated persons from providing services that fall within a particular profession’s scope of practice. Some aspects of the scope of practice of a regulated health profession may overlap or be shared with those of other regulated health professions.

Restricted Activities are a narrowly defined list of invasive, higher risk activities that must not be performed by any person in the course of providing health services, except:

• registrants of a health profession regulatory college who have been granted specific authority to do so in their profession-specific regulation under the HPA, based on their education and competence; and
• non-registrants (including unregulated health occupations) who have been authorized to perform the restricted activity by a regulated health professional who has the authority to perform and also delegate*  or issue an order or authorization to another person to perform the restricted activity.

* Please note: The delegation of restricted activities to non-registrants must be authorized in bylaw by the registrant’s regulatory college, before such a delegation may take place.

For more information on how restricted activities are authorized to be performed under the health professions legislation, profession-specific regulations and regulatory college bylaws, see the Interpretive Bulletin on Scope of Practice, Restricted Activities, and the use of Delegation and other Authorizing Mechanisms.