Definition
Principal area of clinical practice is defined as either the field of principal professional clinical activity or the primary area of responsibility, depending on the profession, as represented by a code.
Components
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Data Element ConceptHealth professional—area of clinical practice (principal)
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Object ClassHealth professional
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PropertyArea of clinical practice
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Value DomainNone
Comments
Guide for use:
Specifics will vary for each profession as appropriate and will be reflected in the classification/coding that is applied. Classification within the National Health Labour Force Collection is profession-specific.
The nursing labour force-specific codes are subject to revision because of changes in the profession and should be read in the context of the comments below.
It is strongly recommended that, in the case of the nurse labour force, further disaggregation be avoided as much as possible. The reason for this recommendation is that any expansion of the classification to include specific specialty areas (e.g. cardiology, otorhinolaryngology, gynaecology etc.) will only capture data from hospitals with dedicated wards or units; persons whose clinical practice includes a mix of cases within a single ward setting (as in the majority of country and minor metropolitan hospitals) will not be included in any single specialty count, leading to a risk of the data being misinterpreted. The data would show a far lower number of practitioners involved in providing services to patients with some of the listed specialty conditions than is the case.