Often overlooked in the realm of healthcare and the laws that govern the field are scope of practice laws. For every healthcare profession, there is a set of services and procedures that certain occupations are legally allowed to perform. Because this list of permitted services and procedures is baked directly into the law that defines an occupation, any efforts to change an occupation's scope of practice must be done through a state’s legislature. One example of scope of practice in action would be how nurses cannot diagnose or prescribe medication. At face value, this makes sense, because a nurse lacks the education and training to independently diagnose or prescribe medication, which are two things that are never included in their scope of practice across the United States.
