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How familiar are you with the College’s new Standards of Practice?
Standards of Practice are essential to ensure quality care is provided to all Albertans by all healthcare professions. These Standards not only provide direction to regulated members in the provision of care but also explain elements of care that patients and the public can expect in their professional interactions with regulated members.
The College’s Standards of Practice (or SoPs) were recently completely rewritten and released in July 2021. These Standards expanded on many areas that the former version did not include – and they now provide a lot more detail on the expectations of care that is to be delivered by regulated members.
Standard 3.0: Practice Management has four sections, all of which deal with requirements related to the management of a professional practice or the elements of practicing professionally. The four sections of Standard 3.0 are:
- Patient Record Access and Content
- Patient Record Management and Retention
- Supervision of Restricted Activities
- Advertising
Patient Health Record Access and Content details the requirements for regulated members to ensure these records are appropriately accessed and updated, to ensure timely continuity of care, and prevent and minimize adverse events to patients.
Patient Record Management and Retention provides information on how a custodian of a health record must maintain the record and in accordance with what pertinent legislation. This Standard is only applicable to regulated members who act as custodians of health records as per the Health Information Act.
Supervision of Restricted Activities is largely based on the requirements set out in the PPR, which allows a regulated member to supervise paramedic practitioners as well as those of other healthcare professions – as long as the supervising regulated member is trained and authorized to perform the authorized activity being supervised.
Advertising deals with how regulated members are to conduct themselves through this avenue of public communication. Most often, this Standard will only be applicable to regulated members who run their own clinics or businesses, but these elements also apply to any regulated member who is responsible for the advertising of any paramedic services.
We encourage everyone to read through the new Standards of Practice to learn more. If you have any questions, comments or general feedback, please email communications@ABparamedics.com.