Question: What does it mean for a doctor to work at the top of their scope of practice?
It’s a pesky phrase that has the potential to inspire both confusion and frustration: “Working at the top of scope”.
Where have you heard this before?
It generally comes up when shortages in the medical workforce lead to calls for other healthcare professionals to “step up”.
What, though, is each profession’s scope, and how do we know when we are working within scope, let alone at the “top”?
In medicine, “scope of practice” is broadly understood, due to training and the roles of the various specialties, whether in the hospital or the community.
