Professional Scope of Practice for ROHP/RNCPs

As an ROHP/RNCP, there are ethical and legal obligations that are crucial to professional practice. Professional practitioners have the duty to be honest with clients, provide quality service and work within the following safeguards outlined below. These principles of ethics and conduct are essential to the process by which you govern your practice to help legally protect yourself and your clients.

Consent Form: Nutritional Practitioners have a duty to explain what they are going to do for the clients and ask for the client’s voluntary consent prior to doing any assessment and/or giving recommendations.

Do not perform any of the 14 controlled acts without legal authority as outlined below:

• a) Diagnosis: communicating or identifying a disease
• b) Performing a procedure on tissue below the dermis
• c) Setting or casting a fractured bone or dislocated joint
• d) Moving a joint of the spine beyond individual’s usual physiological
• range of motion
• e) Administering a substance by injection or inhalation
• f) Putting an instrument, hand or finger beyond: external ear canal,
• nasal passages, larynx, opening of the urethra, labia majora, anal
• verge or an artificial opening into the body
• g) Application of a form of energy: electricity (defibrillation, shock
• therapy, cardiac pacing, electromagnetism (MRI) or sound waves
• ultrasound
• h) Prescribing, dispensing, selling or compounding a drug
• i) Prescribing or dispensing for vision or eye problems
• j) Prescribing a hearing aid
• k) Fitting or dispensing a dental prosthesis, orthodontic appliance or
• device
• l) Managing labour or conducting delivery of a baby
• m) Allergy challenge testing of a kind in which a positive result of the testing is an allergic response.
• n) Treating, by means of psychotherapy technique, an individual’s serious disorder of thought, mood, emotional regulation, perception or memory.

Practice within the usual scope of practice or training of your profession and/or any specialised modalities. You are prohibited from treating or advising a person with respect to his or her health in circumstances in which it is reasonably foreseeable that serious physical harm may result from the treatment or advice or from an omission.

Observe the rules about the use of professional titles and designations: Appropriate and clear use of titles helps the public know with whom they are dealing and prevents confusion. Do not use a professional title that is protected by members of a Regulated College. It is illegal to practise using a protected designation to which you are not permitted. You are permitted to use your professional association’s designation provided you are a member in good standing.

Professional Conduct: Practitioners should act as a professional health care provider, and not as a friend to clients. Becoming too personal or too familiar with a client is confusing. Maintain professional distance that is appropriate and reasonable. It is professional misconduct to engage in any form of sexual behaviour with a client. Interprofessional collaboration: Practitioners must respect their colleagues and be polite even if not in agreement with another’s approaches or treatments.

Personal Health Information Protection Act (PHIPA): Practitioners have a legal and professional duty to protect the privacy of client’s personal health information. PHIPA governs the collection, use, disclosure and access of personal health information. A practitioner or organization’s privacy policy should explain how health information will be protected.

Confidentiality: Practitioners must keep all client information confidential. Failure to maintain confidentiality can be considered professional misconduct. Paper records should be kept under lock and key. Computer records need to be password protected on computers that have virus protection and must be backed up regularly.

Billing: Clients must be told the amount of the practitioner’s fees before services are provided. This includes any product costs. All billing should be open and honest describing the service provided and the products that were sold. Fees should be clearly displayed in the reception area of the practice.

Record Keeping: Failure to make and keep appropriate and adequate records is professional misconduct. The client record is intended to record what was done and what was considered by the practitioner. It should always contain identifying information such as the name and date of birth. The record should also include any progress notes, any changes or modifications to the recommendations. Any consent obtained should be included in the record. A practitioner needs to keep the record for ten years from the last interaction with the client, or the client’s eighteenth birthday, whichever is later. The rule of record keeping should include financial records, appointment and attendance records. Records must be legible.

Municipal Licensing: Practitioners may require a municipal licence that sets conditions for a practitioner’s premises in which a practitioner operates.

Professional Development: Practitioners must participate in regular upgrade hours each year to remain informed about changes and innovations in practice techniques, and develop their skills and knowledge.

Proper Advertising: Advertising should be factual, accurate, objectively verifiable, independent of personal opinion, and professionally appropriate. It should not mislead or include false or unverifiable information. It is professional misconduct to engage in false or misleading advertising.