Scope of Practice — What It Is and Why It Comes Before Adding Staff

Scope of Practice

A Scope is a specific clinical capability or credential a staff member holds — for example Trauma, Paediatrics, Resus, ALS, Mental Health. Some shifts and streams require staff with specific scopes.

Why this MUST come before adding staff

Scopes are assigned to staff at the moment you add them. If you haven't created your scope catalogue yet, the staff add form has nothing to tick — you'll have to come back and add scopes to every record one by one.

Order: Streams → Craft Groups → Scope of Practice → Add Staff.

Where to find it

Sidebar → Scope of Practice.

Adding a scope

1. Click + Add Scope.
2. Fill in:
   • Name (e.g. ALS)
   • Short code (e.g. ALS)
   • Description (optional, useful for audit)
   • Active toggle
3. Save.

How scopes are used downstream

• Vacancy Planning — a slot can require "1 RN with Resus"; only RNs holding the Resus scope can be assigned
• Master Roster — Grid Assignment Modal pre-filters to staff with the right scopes
• Living Roster — compliance check fires if you assign someone missing a required scope
• IRIS — never suggests a staff member who doesn't hold the required scopes

Maintenance — renaming, retiring, splitting

Rename a scope:

1. Edit the scope, change the name, save.
2. The change is immediate everywhere the scope is referenced. Audit logs record the previous name.

Retire an obsolete scope:

1. Edit the scope and toggle Active off.
2. The scope disappears from add-scope pickers but stays in historical reports and on existing staff records.

Split a scope (e.g. Resus → ALS + PALS):

1. Add the two new scopes.
2. Clinician Staff → filter by holders of the old scope.
3. Open each affected staff record → tick the new scope(s) that apply → save.
4. When all are migrated, retire the old scope.

Tip: If you have many holders, ask the Intelligent Roster support team for a bulk re-tag — they have an admin script for it.

Tips & common mistakes

• Don't delete-and-recreate to "rename". Edit-in-place preserves history.
• Retiring a scope doesn't remove it from existing shift requirements. Roster Builders will need to remove it from Vacancy Planning, otherwise rosters will fail to assign anyone (no one holds an inactive scope).
• Keep your scope list lean. Two dozen scopes is plenty; 200 is unmanageable.