PSW Scope of Practice in Ontario: What the Law Actually Says

Understanding what you are trained and permitted to do is not optional — it is the foundation of everything you do as a Personal Support Worker. Every clinical skill, every client interaction, every decision you make on the job runs through it. In scenario-style practice questions, the reasoning comes back to the same two questions: where the limits of the PSW role sit, and who holds the authority for the task in front of you.

This guide explains how those limits are built in Ontario: what the law actually restricts, what the province's training standard says the role covers, how delegation and assignment differ, where professional boundaries sit, and who you report to. Where a rule depends on your setting or your employer's policy, we say so.

Short answer (checked September 17, 2026): Ontario has no legislated PSW scope of practice; the province's Personal Support Worker Standard, January 2022 (a training standard for PSW programs, not law; checked September 12, 2026) calls PSWs unregulated care providers. What you may do comes from the plan of care, your employer's policy and the law: controlled acts under the Regulated Health Professions Act, 1991 (law; checked September 17, 2026) need an exception or a delegation.

Sources: the Regulated Health Professions Act, 1991 (law; checked September 17, 2026); Ontario's Personal Support Worker Standard, January 2022 (a training standard for PSW programs, not law; checked September 12, 2026); the College of Nurses of Ontario's practice documents (guidance that binds nurses; checked September 12, 2026). This is exam-preparation education, not legal or clinical advice.

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Does a PSW have a scope of practice in Ontario?

Not in the legal sense, and that is the most useful thing to know before anything else. Ontario's PSW training standard defines unregulated care providers — personal support workers among them — as care providers who "are not licensed or registered members of a health regulatory college/body do not have a legislated scope of practice, protected title or a set of professional standards for practice" (Glossary, January 2022; the missing conjunction is in the original).

What exists instead is a stack of three things. First, the Regulated Health Professions Act, 1991 (RHPA) restricts fourteen controlled acts and says who may perform them. Second, the regulation for the setting you work in — long-term care, retirement homes, home and community care — adds its own rules. Third, the training standard tells graduates to "work within the personal support worker role in various care settings in accordance with all applicable legislation, standards, employer job descriptions, policies, procedures and guidelines", with care delivered "as directed by the plan of care".

The word "unregulated" does not mean unqualified or unsupervised. It means PSWs are not members of a health regulatory college under the RHPA. The Health and Supportive Care Providers Oversight Authority (HSCPOA) describes itself as "an oversight body, independent from Ontario government, that has a legislated mandate to register and provide oversight of personal support workers", and says the Ministry of Health has made registration voluntary rather than mandatory, while noting that this may change (hscpoa.com FAQs, checked September 12, 2026).

Where PSWs Work

PSWs work across many settings, and the setting genuinely matters — some rules change when you move between them:

• Long-term care homes
• Home and community care (client's home)
• Hospitals (as part of the care team)
• Retirement homes
• Adult day programs
• Supportive housing
• Hospice and palliative care settings

The same task can be governed differently in a long-term care home, a retirement home and a client's own home, because each of those settings has its own regulation on top of the RHPA. Medication is the clearest example. Everywhere, your employer's policies and the client's plan of care sit on top of whichever rules apply, and the training standard makes the plan of care the reference point for the care you deliver.

Regulated vs. Unregulated Health Professionals

Regulated health professionals are members of a health regulatory college under the RHPA — nurses through the College of Nurses of Ontario, physicians through their own college, and others besides. A health profession Act gives each profession the controlled acts its members are authorized to perform.

Unregulated care providers include PSWs. They are not members of a health regulatory college, and there are exactly two ways one can lawfully perform a controlled act. The College of Nurses of Ontario states it plainly: "A UCP only has the authority to perform a controlled act through an exception or when an individual who has the authority to order or perform the act delegates this authority to the UCP" (Working With Unregulated Care Providers, p. 4, checked September 12, 2026).

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What can a PSW do in Ontario?

Most of a PSW's day is ordinary personal support work: tasks that are not controlled acts, that the plan of care sets out, and that your employer's job description and policies confirm. Ontario's home-care regulation defines "personal support services" in much the same shape — personal hygiene activities, routine personal activities of living, assisting a patient with those activities, and training a person to carry them out (O. Reg. 187/22, checked September 16, 2026).

Personal Care

• Bathing (bed bath, tub bath, shower)
• Oral hygiene (brushing teeth, denture care)
• Skin care (moisturizing, observing skin integrity)
• Hair care (washing, brushing, styling)
• Shaving
• Perineal care
• Toileting assistance (bedpan, urinal, commode, toilet)
• Dressing and undressing
• Nail care, to the extent the plan of care and your employer's policy allow it

Mobility and Positioning

• Assisting with transfers (bed to chair, chair to wheelchair)
• Assisting with ambulation (walking with or without aids)
• Repositioning in bed (turning schedules for pressure injury prevention)
• Range of motion exercises (as directed in the care plan)
• Applying and removing supportive devices such as compression stockings or splints, as set out in the plan of care and where you have been trained

Nutrition and Hydration

• Meal preparation (in home care settings)
• Feeding assistance
• Monitoring food and fluid intake
• Setting up meal trays
• Encouraging adequate hydration
• Following special diets as outlined in the care plan

Observation and Reporting

• Taking and recording vital signs (temperature, pulse, respiration, blood pressure, oxygen saturation)
• Measuring and recording intake and output
• Measuring height and weight
• Observing and reporting changes in the client's condition
• Documenting care provided

Household and Environmental Support

• Light housekeeping (in home care settings)
• Laundry
• Maintaining a clean and safe environment
• Bed making (occupied and unoccupied)

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What can a PSW not do? How the limits work

Ontario's PSW training standard says PSWs have no legislated scope of practice. What decides whether a task is yours is the RHPA's controlled-act rules and their exceptions or a delegation, the legislation for your setting, your employer's policy and the client's plan of care. The RHPA publishes the list of controlled acts: section 27(1) says no person shall perform a controlled act "in the course of providing health care services to an individual" unless "the person is a member authorized by a health profession Act to perform the controlled act" or "the performance of the controlled act has been delegated to the person by a member described in clause (a)". Section 27(2) then lists fourteen controlled acts, and section 29(1) sets out the exceptions that let someone who is not a member perform some of them.

What are controlled acts, and can a PSW perform one?

Section 29(1)(e) is the exception a paid PSW relies on at work. An act is not a contravention of section 27(1) if it is done in the course of "assisting a person with his or her routine activities of living and the act is a controlled act set out in paragraph 5 or 6 of subsection 27 (2)". That is the whole of it. Paragraph 5 is "administering a substance by injection or inhalation". Paragraph 6 is putting an instrument, hand or finger past one of the body openings the Act lists, or into an artificial opening. The exception never reaches paragraph 1 (communicating a diagnosis) or paragraph 2 (a procedure below the dermis or a mucous membrane).

The College of Nurses of Ontario supplies the working test: "A procedure is considered to be a routine activity of living when its need, response and outcome have been established over time and are predictable." That is a regulator's gloss written for nurses, not statutory text, but it is the standard a supervising or delegating nurse will apply. CNO's own table sets out the paid-care-provider column act by act: a procedure below the dermis or a mucous membrane is "Not included in exception; requires delegation"; injection or inhalation is permitted by the exception "if part of routine activity of living"; an instrument, hand or finger into a body opening is permitted "if part of routine activity of living; otherwise requires delegation".

Two other exceptions are worth knowing. Section 29(1)(a) covers "rendering first aid or temporary assistance in an emergency", and it is open to anyone, PSW or not — but for a PSW it reaches no further than your first-aid training and what your employer's emergency protocol directs. Section 29(1)(d) covers treating a member of your own household and reaches paragraphs 1, 5 or 6 — wider than the exception you get at work, which is why a family member may do something a paid PSW may not.

Where the authority for a task comes from

Medication is where the authority question bites hardest, and Ontario's PSW training standard sets the outcome as assistance: graduates "assist the client with medication following the client's plan of care, and if a delegated act, under the supervision of a regulated health professional or done by exception under the most accountable person and in accordance with all applicable legislation and employer policies" (Personal Support Worker Standard, VLO 9, January 2022, checked September 12, 2026). Whether a PSW may go further and administer a drug depends on the regulation for the setting, which we work through setting by setting in can a PSW give medication in Ontario.

A practical test

When you are unsure, work the question in this order. Is the task a controlled act under section 27(2)? If it is not, the plan of care and your employer's policy decide whether it is yours to do. If it is, does the section 29(1)(e) routine-activities exception apply — that is, is the act paragraph 5 or paragraph 6, and is it genuinely part of assisting this client with their routine activities of living? If that exception does not apply, does another statutory exception apply — section 29(1)(a) for first aid or temporary assistance in an emergency, for example? If none of them does, the task needs a delegation from someone authorized to perform it. Whichever branch you are in, the legislation for your setting (in a long-term care home, O. Reg. 246/22 — for medication, s. 140), the client's plan of care and your employer's policy still have to permit the task for you.

Then ask the second question, because authority is not competence. CNO is explicit: "Although a UCP may have the authority to perform a procedure through an exception, delegation or because the procedure is not a controlled act, that does not mean that the UCP is competent to perform the procedure or that it is appropriate for the UCP to perform it."

• You can observe that a wound looks red and swollen and report exactly what you saw; deciding whether it is infected is a clinical assessment that is not yours to make.
• You can measure and record a blood pressure well outside this client's usual range and report it; deciding what to do about the client's medication belongs to the prescriber.
• You can notice that a client who is usually alert is confused and report the change; naming the cause to the client would be communicating a diagnosis, which is paragraph 1 of section 27(2).

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Delegation vs assignment: what is the difference?

This distinction does real work, and it is easy to blur. Assignment and delegation are not the same thing, and most of a PSW's day is assignment.

Assignment

The College of Nurses of Ontario defines assigning as "the act of determining or allocating responsibility for particular aspects of care to another individual", adds that this "includes assigning procedures that may or may not be a controlled act", and notes that "ideally, a range of care needs, rather than specific procedures, are assigned" (Working With Unregulated Care Providers, p. 7).

Example: The RPN assigns you to assist Mrs. Chen with her morning bath, take her vital signs and record her breakfast intake. None of that is a controlled act, and all of it is in her plan of care. It is being assigned.

Delegation

Delegation is narrower, and it only ever concerns controlled acts. In CNO's Scope of Practice standard: "Delegation occurs when a regulated health professional (delegator), who is legally authorized and competent to perform a controlled act, temporarily grants their authority to perform that act to another individual (delegatee)." The authority is temporary and person-specific, and section 28 of the RHPA adds that any delegation must follow the regulations of the delegating professional's own profession.

Example: A nurse delegates a controlled-act procedure to you, for one named client, having satisfied herself that you can perform it safely for that client in those circumstances. By contrast, helping that same client take an oral medication that has already been prescribed and dispensed is not a controlled act at all — so it is not delegation. It is assignment under the plan of care.

What has to be in place before you perform a delegated act

Delegation is not a handover of paperwork, and CNO puts most of the duty on the nurse who delegates.

1. The decision and the competence check belong to the delegator. "A nurse who delegates a controlled act is responsible for the decision to delegate and for ensuring the delegatee is competent to perform the controlled act." A nurse who teaches, assigns duties to or supervises an unregulated care provider must "know the UCP is competent to perform the particular procedure or activity safely for the client in the given circumstances".
2. A written record of the delegation has to be in place before the act is performed. CNO's Scope of Practice standard requires the delegating nurse to "ensure that a written record of the particulars of the delegation is available in the place where the controlled act is to be performed, before it is performed", and that record must carry the date of the delegation, the delegator's or delegatee's name as applicable, and any conditions attached to it (Appendix B, requirement 10). Separately, the nurse must ensure you understand "the extent of her or his responsibilities in performing the procedure(s)", know "when and who to ask for assistance", and know "when, how and to whom to report the outcome of the procedure" — being told and repeating it back does not replace the written record.
3. Some controlled acts cannot be delegated at all. Nurses cannot delegate an act that was delegated to them — sub-delegation — and CNO's restriction list also names dispensing a drug and psychotherapy as defined in the Act.
4. Supervision means clinical monitoring, not line management. CNO defines supervising as "the monitoring and directing of specific activities of UCPs" and says it "does not include ongoing managerial responsibilities".

Your Right to Refuse

If you are not competent to perform the act for this client in these circumstances, or you do not know what to watch for and who to report to, say so before you start. That is not insubordination. CNO's own guidance treats authority and competence as two separate questions, and competence is the one that keeps the client safe.

Reason it the same way every time: if you are asked to perform a task without the training, the direction or the supervision to do it safely, the safe response is to decline, say which piece is missing, and ask for it to be put in place.

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Professional Boundaries and the DIPPS Framework

Professional boundaries define the limits of the PSW-client relationship. They protect both you and the client. Crossing professional boundaries can harm the client, compromise the quality of care, and put your career at risk.

DIPPS

The DIPPS framework is the guiding principle for professional PSW practice. Every interaction with a client should uphold these five values:

• D — Dignity: Treat every client with respect and honour their worth as a person, regardless of their condition, behaviour, or background.

• I — Independence: Promote the client's ability to do things for themselves whenever possible. Do not do for the client what they can safely do on their own. This means offering choices, encouraging participation in their own care, and supporting their autonomy.

• P — Preferences: Respect the client's personal preferences for how care is provided. This includes cultural, religious, and personal preferences for bathing, dressing, food, daily routines, and social interaction.

• P — Privacy: Protect the client's physical privacy (closing curtains, knocking before entering, draping during personal care) and informational privacy (confidentiality of health information, not discussing client details in public areas).

• S — Safety: Ensure the client's physical and emotional safety at all times. This includes fall prevention, proper body mechanics, safe transfers, and creating an environment free from harm.

Boundary Violations

Boundary problems that test the limits of the professional relationship:

• Accepting gifts or money from clients. Even small gifts can create an obligation or shift the professional relationship. Follow your employer's policy on gifts.

• Sharing personal information. Your role is to focus on the client, not to share your personal life, problems, or opinions. Sharing personal details can blur the professional boundary and create inappropriate attachments.

• Developing personal relationships. Becoming friends with clients, dating clients, or maintaining contact with former clients outside of the professional relationship crosses a boundary.

• Making promises you cannot keep. Telling a client "I will always be here for you" or "I will never let them move you to another unit" creates expectations you cannot fulfill and undermines trust.

• Favouritism. Providing better care or more attention to clients you personally like, or spending less time with clients you find difficult.

• Becoming over-involved. Taking on a parental or family role, making decisions for the client, or becoming emotionally enmeshed in their situation.

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Who does a PSW report to?

Reporting is one of the most important parts of the role. Because you spend the most time with clients, you are often the first person to notice a change. Ontario's PSW training standard makes it a graduate outcome in its own right: PSWs "identify relevant client information within the roles and responsibilities of the personal support worker using observation, critical thinking, and effective communication skills to report and document findings".

Who to Report To

The training standard says graduates "report findings to members of the interprofessional team and/or responsible person", and for medication specifically, "report changes to the registered staff or most accountable person". It defines the most accountable person as "the individual most able to assist a client with competent medication management and/or care in accordance with the plan of care and agency policy", and says that person "may be the client, client's family member or significant other member of the client's support system" — so it is not automatically a nurse. Find out on your first shift who your reporting path runs to in the setting you are working in.

When to Report

• Emergency — get help first. If a client collapses, cannot breathe, is unresponsive, is bleeding heavily or is otherwise in immediate danger, follow your employer's emergency protocol, which tells you when to call emergency services and who else to alert. Getting help comes before the paperwork and before finding the right person to report to.
• Suspected abuse or neglect — the law adds a second report. In a long-term care home, if you have reasonable grounds to suspect that abuse of a resident by anyone, or neglect of a resident by the licensee or staff that resulted in harm or a risk of harm, has occurred or may occur, the Fixing Long-Term Care Act, 2021 (s. 28(1)) requires you to report the suspicion, and the information it is based on, immediately to the Director — and a staff member who fails to make that report commits an offence (s. 28(5)). In a retirement home, the Retirement Homes Act, 2010 (s. 75(1)) places a comparable immediate duty on you, to the Registrar of the Retirement Homes Regulatory Authority, where the abuse or neglect results in harm or a risk of harm — and a staff member of a retirement home who fails to make that report commits an offence (s. 98(1)(c)(iii)). Telling your supervisor or the registered staff does not replace that report; follow your employer's abuse policy for how the report is made. These two statutes cover long-term care homes and retirement homes; in other settings follow your employer's abuse policy, and call emergency services when someone is in immediate danger. Our guide to recognizing and reporting abuse and neglect as a PSW works through the types and their warning signs, who to report to, and why PSWs report rather than investigate.
• Immediately, through your reporting path: a fall or injury, a sudden change in condition or behaviour, new or increased pain, any symptom that is not settling, a refusal of care that affects safety, or a measurement well outside this client's usual pattern. Ontario's PSW training standard tells graduates to "communicate concerns to the team immediately when symptoms are not settling".
• Before the end of your shift: changes in skin integrity, changes in appetite or fluid intake, changes in mood, and anything you noticed but could not explain.
• In routine reporting and documentation: the care you provided, intake and output, and measurements within the client's usual pattern.

What to Report

Be specific and objective. Report what you observed, not what you think it means.

Instead of: "Mrs. Singh does not look good today." Say: "Mrs. Singh's blood pressure is 90/55 this morning, which is lower than her usual 128/78. She says she feels dizzy when sitting up, and she only ate 25 percent of her breakfast."

Include:

• What you observed or measured (exact numbers, exact descriptions)
• When you observed it
• What the client said
• What you did in response
• How it compares to the client's baseline

Documentation

If you did not document it, it did not happen. This is a core principle of healthcare documentation. Record all care provided, all observations, and all communications with the care team. Follow your facility's documentation standards — most use electronic charting, but some still use paper records.

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How these limits show up in scenario questions

Scenario-style practice questions test these limits by asking you to choose the correct PSW action. These are the patterns worth recognizing.

Scenario Type 1: "A client asks you to..."

A client asks you to do something that is not yours to do. The expected answer is to explain politely that the task is not part of what you have been assigned, and that you will pass the request on through your reporting path.

Example: A client asks you to increase their insulin dose because they ate more than usual at lunch. Choosing a dose is the prescriber's decision, not yours — in a long-term care home the regulation requires every drug to be administered "in accordance with the directions for use specified by the prescriber". Explain that changing a dose is not something you can do, document the request, and report it.

Scenario Type 2: "A coworker asks you to..."

A colleague asks you to take on a task that was given to them. The question is never who is busy — it is where the authority for that task comes from.

Example: Another PSW asks you to apply a client's medicated cream because she is busy. Start from the plan of care: is this client's cream part of the care you have been assigned, and does your employer's policy allow it? A colleague's workload is not the authority for a task. And if the act in question is a controlled act that was delegated to her, she cannot hand it on to you at all — CNO prohibits sub-delegation, and a delegation is granted to a named person for a named client.

Scenario Type 3: "You observe..."

You observe something concerning about a client. The reasoning runs through the role itself: make the client safe, then report what you observed through your reporting path — immediately if it is urgent, and by your employer's emergency protocol if the client is in danger. You do not investigate, diagnose, or intervene beyond the role.

Example: You observe that a client who is usually alert and oriented is now confused and cannot remember where they are. You do not attempt to determine the cause. You ensure the client's immediate safety, then report your specific observations through your reporting path.

Scenario Type 4: Boundary Dilemmas

A scenario describes a situation where professional boundaries are being tested. The correct answer upholds DIPPS principles and maintains the professional relationship.

Example: A client offers you a $50 gift card for the holidays and says, "Please take it — you are the only one who really cares about me." The correct response is to thank the client sincerely, explain that you are not able to accept it under your employer's policy on gifts, and reassure them that the quality of their care is not affected by gifts.

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What does HSCPOA registration change?

The HSCPOA describes itself as "an oversight body, independent from Ontario government, that has a legislated mandate to register and provide oversight of personal support workers (PSWs), and other potential classes of registrants, in the interest of public protection", and says it "resembles the Retirement Homes Regulatory Authority or a health regulatory college in Ontario, except it has its own unique regulatory model" (hscpoa.com FAQs, checked September 12, 2026).

What that means for you right now:

• Registration is voluntary. HSCPOA says the Ministry of Health made it voluntary "to avoid any unintended consequences or disruptions on the health care system and the PSW supply in Ontario", and adds that "in the future, PSW registration may become mandatory in Ontario, which would be a decision by the Ministry of Health".
• It already matters for hiring in long-term care. Every long-term care licensee must ensure that a person it hires as a PSW is registered with HSCPOA in the personal support worker class or is assessed by the licensee as meeting the O. Reg. 217/24 registration requirements (O. Reg. 246/22 s. 52(1), checked September 16, 2026). Section 52(2) lets a licensee instead hire a registered nurse or registered practical nurse, a nursing student, or a student enrolled in a PSW program, each under the conditions the regulation sets — for example the Director of Nursing and Personal Care's opinion of their skills and knowledge, current College of Nurses of Ontario registration for nurses, and supervision by registered nursing staff and a program instructor for PSW students. A transition to December 1, 2027 applies only to people hired before January 1, 2026 whom the licensee reasonably considers to have adequate skills, training and knowledge (s. 52(4)). Registration itself remains voluntary; s. 52 is a hiring check on long-term care licensees.
• Registering does not make you a member of a health regulatory college under the RHPA, and it does not change the controlled-act rules above.
• Check HSCPOA's own site for the current requirements before you apply, because the registration rules are theirs to change.

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Key takeaways

These limits are not one exam topic. They run through personal care, safety, ethics, communication and workplace scenarios. Here is what to hold on to:

• There is no legislated PSW scope of practice in Ontario. The limits are built from the RHPA's controlled acts, the regulation for your setting, your employer's policies and the client's plan of care.
• A controlled act needs an RHPA exception or a delegation. The s. 29(1)(e) routine-activities exception reaches only paragraph 5 and paragraph 6 of section 27(2); section 29(1) holds other exceptions, such as first aid or temporary assistance in an emergency under s. 29(1)(a) — and only within your first-aid training and what your employer's emergency protocol directs; otherwise the act needs a delegation.
• Assignment is not delegation. Assignment allocates responsibility for aspects of care; delegation temporarily transfers a regulated professional's authority for a controlled act, and it cannot be passed on to anyone else.
• Authority is not competence. Even where a task is permitted, it still has to be safe for this client, in these circumstances, performed by you.
• Apply DIPPS to every boundary question. The expected answer upholds dignity, independence, preferences, privacy and safety.
• Report, do not diagnose. Observe and report through your reporting path, and use your employer's emergency protocol when a client is in danger.

For a complete study plan that covers scope of practice within the broader NACC curriculum, read our guide to passing the NACC exam. To learn about PSW compensation and career prospects in Ontario, see our PSW salary guide.

Knowing where these limits come from is not just about passing the exam. It is about practising safely, protecting your clients, and being able to say exactly why a task is or is not yours to do. Learn the structure now, and it will serve you every day of your professional life.

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Sources

• Law — Regulated Health Professions Act, 1991, ss. 27, 28 and 29, checked September 17, 2026 (consolidation period January 1, 2026; e-Laws currency date September 14, 2026).
• Law — O. Reg. 246/22, ss. 52 and 140, under the Fixing Long-Term Care Act, 2021, checked September 16, 2026.
• Law — O. Reg. 187/22, definition of "personal support services", checked September 16, 2026.
• Law — Fixing Long-Term Care Act, 2021, s. 28 (reporting certain matters to the Director), checked September 17, 2026 (consolidation period December 11, 2025; e-Laws currency date September 14, 2026).
• Law — Retirement Homes Act, 2010, ss. 75 and 98 (reporting certain matters to the Registrar; offences), checked September 17, 2026 (consolidation period June 28, 2024; e-Laws currency date September 14, 2026).
• Ontario PSW training standard (not law) — Ministry of Colleges and Universities, Personal Support Worker Standard, January 2022 (PDF), checked September 12, 2026. It sets what PSW programs must teach; it does not itself grant or limit what a PSW may do at work.
• CNO guidance (binds nurses) — College of Nurses of Ontario, Working With Unregulated Care Providers (PDF) and Scope of Practice (PDF), both checked September 12, 2026.
• Oversight body's own material — Health and Supportive Care Providers Oversight Authority, Applicant FAQs and Code of Ethics, both checked September 12, 2026.

This is exam-preparation education, not legal or clinical advice. What you may do is governed by the law in your setting, your employer's policies and the client's plan of care. PSW Leap is not affiliated with NACC.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where does medication fit in a PSW's scope of practice?

By default a PSW assists with medication under the client's plan of care, which is how Ontario's PSW training standard (January 2022) frames the role. Whether a trained PSW may go further and administer a drug depends on the regulation for the setting, and our medication guide, Can a PSW Give Medication in Ontario, works through long-term care, retirement homes and home care one at a time.

What is the difference between delegation and assignment for PSWs?

Assigning, in the College of Nurses of Ontario's words, is allocating responsibility for particular aspects of care to another individual, and it covers procedures that may or may not be controlled acts. Delegation is narrower: a regulated professional who is legally authorized and competent to perform a controlled act temporarily grants that authority to someone else, is responsible for the decision and must ensure the person is competent. A PSW cannot pass a delegated act on to anyone else, and nurses cannot delegate dispensing a drug. Most of a PSW's day is assigned, not delegated.

Does a PSW have a scope of practice in Ontario?

Not in the legal sense. Ontario's PSW training standard (January 2022) describes unregulated care providers, personal support workers included, as care providers who do not have a legislated scope of practice, protected title or a set of professional standards for practice. What a PSW may do is built from three things instead: the controlled-act rules in the Regulated Health Professions Act, the regulations for the setting you work in, and your employer's job description and policies together with the client's plan of care. That is not the same as having no professional obligations: HSCPOA says all PSWs registered with it are held accountable to its Code of Ethics, which is the foundation for its complaints and discipline process.

Who does a PSW report to?

Ontario's PSW training standard says graduates report findings to members of the interprofessional team and the responsible person, and that changes seen after helping with medication go to the registered staff or the most accountable person. The standard defines the most accountable person as the individual most able to assist a client with competent medication management or care under the plan of care and agency policy, which may be the client or a family member, so it is not always a nurse. Ask on your first shift what your reporting path is.