Expanding Scope of Practice for Ontario Optometrists
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In 2011, The Optometry Act, 1991 was amended to include The Designated Drugs and Standards of Practice Regulation which expanded the scope of practice for Ontario optometrists to include prescribing privileges from a specific list of drugs. The goals of the optometry reform were to increase access to care, decrease burden on medical and hospital resources and allow optometrists to practice to their full scope. The policy response was spurred by a recommendation from the Health Professions Regulatory Advisory Council and the prescribing precedence in other Canadian jurisdictions. Bill 171, The Health Systems Improvement Act, amended The Optometry Act, 1991, Section 4 to include the authorized act of prescribing designated drugs, while The Designated Drugs and Standards of Practice, passed on 6 April 2011, listed the individual drugs optometrists are authorized to prescribe. The resulting response of a specific list of authorized drugs was seen as a limiting and inflexible system that will require changes as newer drugs are developed. La Loi de 1991 sur les optométristes a été modifiée en 2011, afin d’intégrer le règlement sur les médicaments enregistrés et les normes de pratiques (Designated Drugs and Standards of Practice Regulation) élargissant le champ d’activité des optométristes en Ontario aux privilèges de prescription d’une liste explicite de médicaments. La réforme de l’optométrie avait pour objectifs d’augmenter l’accès aux soins, de diminuer la charge de travail pesant sur les ressources médicales et hospitalières et de permettre aux optométristes de pratiquer pleinement leur profession. L’initiative politique a été provoquée par la recommandation du Conseil consultatif de réglementation des professions de la santé ainsi que par l’existence de tels privilèges dans d’autres provinces canadiennes. Alors que le projet de loi 171, ou Loi de 2007 sur l’amélioration du système de santé, avait modifié l’article 4 de la Loi de 1991 sur les optométristes en ouvrant la possibilité de prescrire des médicaments enregistrés, le règlement sur les médicaments enregistrés et les normes de pratiques (Designated Drugs and Standards of Practice Regulation), adopté le 6 Avril 2011, énumère les médicaments individuels que les optométristes sont autorisés à prescrire. La réponse politique consistant à définir une liste explicite de médicaments autorisés a été jugée limitative et rigide, qui réclamera des aménagements successifs pour toute innovation médicamenteuse.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.010 | 0.022 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.008 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.007 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.021 | 0.004 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".