The Continuum of Health Professions

The large number of health care professions with overlapping scopes of practice is intimidating to students, confusing to patients, and frustrating to policymakers. As abundant and diverse as the hundreds of health care professions are, they possess sufficient numbers of common characteristics to warrant their placement on a common continuum of health professions that permits methodical comparisons. From 2009-2012, the author developed and delivered experimental courses at 2 community colleges for the purposes of creating and validating a novel method for comparing health care professions. This paper describes the bidirectional health professions continuum that emerged from these courses and its potential value in helping students select a health care career, motivating health care providers to seek interprofessional collaboration, assisting patients with the selection of health care providers, and helping policymakers to better understand the health care professions they regulate.