PURPOSE The purpose of this investigation was to examine the commissioning history of the professions of physicians, dentists, nurses, nurse practitioners, physician assistants and dental hygienists of the United States Public Health Service (USPHS), and to determine a critical pathway to commissioning new health care professions into the USPHS. The Advanced Dental Hygiene Practitioner (ADHP), ...

The University of New England includes more than a dozen health or health related programs within its colleges of Health Professions, Osteopathic Medicine, Pharmacy, Arts and Sciences, School of Public Health, and a soon to be founded College of Dental Medicine. For more than a decade, the Westbrook College of Health Professions has integrated interprofessional education into its programs. Earl...

The health professions are confronted with external pressures to assure the public of the continuing competence of health care providers and internal pressures for self-regulation. This article describes the forces driving continuing competence, the difficulty defining the scope of professional competencies for experienced practitioners, the difficulty creating valid measures to evaluate contin...