There is strong and increasing support for a scope of practice for midwives that will allow them to provide the services needed to reduce the main causes of maternal mortality, including endorsements by WHO, the United Nations Population Fund UNFPAA), ICM, and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).
The level of awareness among operational managers ranged from a low of 29% for the new Qualifications Framework to 71% for the new Scope of Practice for nurses.
Such 'beacon' practices can provide a mustering point for an expanded scope of practice for primary care, integrated primary/secondary service delivery, interprofessional learning, relevant local clinical research, and a focus on local service innovation, enhancing rather than fragmenting the collective capacity of existing primary care.
However, respondents from regulatory bodies felt changes would be required to some laws to expand the scope of practice for certain cadres, for example if clinical officers were to do Caesarean Sections.
The study focused on four national policies: the 2008 Nursing Strategy, the Scope of Practice for nurses, the Framework for Nursing Qualifications, and the OSD.
A benefit for nursing included an increased scope of practice for the community nurses involved, but the additional workload, particularly within an already stretched service, was identified as a challenge.
This legislation seems to provide some scope for dual practice through three articles: the 5th, 8th and 14th.
This paper analyses the dynamics, strengths, and weaknesses of nurses' participation in four national health workforce policies: the 2008 Nursing Strategy, revision of the Scope of Practice for nurses, the new Framework for Nursing Qualifications, and the Occupation-Specific Dispensation (OSD) remuneration policy.
In the third paper within this theme, Ditlopo et al. (13) analyse the dynamics, strengths, and weaknesses of nurses' participation in four national health workforce policies: the 2008 Nursing Strategy, revision of the Scope of Practice for nurses, the new Framework for Nursing Qualifications, and the Occupation-Specific Dispensation (OSD) remuneration policy.
The regulation for each profession sets out reserved titles, scope of practice for registrants and reserved actions.
