Where concerns about reduced scope predominated naturopaths' comments, it was a concern around overlapping scopes that repeatedly appeared in homeopaths' and Chinese medicine practitioners' responses.
Overlapping scopes of practice were not restricted to inherently spiritual issues, as healthcare providers recognised the role of spiritual care professionals in addressing psychosocial issues, noting that in many incidences these domains of care were intertwined.
The nursing workforce in Alberta is segmented into different categories of nurses: Licensed Practical Nurses (LPNs), Registered Nurses (RNs) and Registered Psychiatric Nurses (RPNs), with overlapping scopes of practice [ 11].
However, Bourgeault and Mulvale have highlighted the efforts of regulatory agencies to break down exclusive professional boundaries on health teams given that overlapping scopes of practice allow teams to be more responsive to changing conditions [ 12].
[CM] Evidently such concerns around overlapping practice scopes relate to the issue of training standards, which will be discussed in greater detail further on.
Specific concerns around overlapping practice scopes between TCAM and other professions raised questions about the implementation of non-monopolistic regulatory models such as Ontario's.
However, more broadly contextualized, the concerns raised by members of both of these occupational groups about overlapping practice scopes may also speak to larger trends at play in the field of TCAM professional regulation.
If overlapping-scopes regulatory models are to become more normative in North America, it may become important for regulators to engage more directly with clear criteria for what constitutes competent or effective care for specific practices.
In the Stanley Black & Decker case, the elements included overlapping businesses with broad scope for expense reduction, a modest premium amply justified by the synergies, clear governance and control, and a shared distribution of future gains.
The objective of this note is to propose a method for stabilization of structurally fixed modes in expansions of LTI dynamic systems in the scope of overlapping decentralized control design based on the expansion/contraction framework, enabling successful design for a broader class of problems than considered so far.
