Regulating health professional scopes of practice: comparing institutional arrangements and approaches in the US, Canada, Australia and the UK.

Our comparative examination finds that the different regulatory approaches in these countries have emerged in response to similar challenges. In some cases, 'tasks' or 'activities' are the basis of regulation, whereas in other contexts protected 'titles' are regulated, and in some cases both. From our results and the jurisdiction-specific SWOT analyses, we have conceptualized a synthesized table of leading practices related to regulating scopes of practice mapped to specific regulatory principles. We discuss the implications for how these different approaches achieve positive outcomes for the public, but also for health professionals and the system more broadly in terms of workforce optimization.