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Book Review

Law for the Nursing Profession and Allied Health Professionals

The Australian Journal of Rural Health ©Volume 1 Number 2, February 1993

24 The Australian Journal of Rural Health

Book Review

CCH Health and Medical Law Editors & Laufer, S. 1992. Law for the Nursing Profession and Allied Health Care Professionals (2nd ed.), CCH, Sydney.

Just as its title implies, Law for the Nursing Profession and Allied Health Professionals (hereinafter referred to as Law for the Nursing Profession) provides a very current explanation of the law as it impinges principally upon the practice of nurses but also upon that of allied health professionals throughout Australia. The first edition was published in 1990 and was itself an excellent publication. All of the features that contributed to that excellence have been preserved in this second edition with the added advantage that it articulates the law as at 20 October 1992.

In recent years there have been published in Australia quite a number of books dealing with the area of law for the health professions and in particular, for nursing. As one would expect, some of these are very good and some less so. There are, however, a number of features that make this particular book quite outstanding. One such feature is the comprehensive treatment of relevant law. It includes chapters which address issues which are among the most contemporary and controversial in health care provision, eg mental health and pa-

-- tient rights . Where such?sms-arise it is impera- tive that the health care professional is very aware of what the law says on the matter and this book is very informative.

Another feature of this book is the manner in which it enables the reader to pursue a particular issue through the provision of extensive reference lists after each chapter. In this connection, the references tmXZZl%n Health and Medical Law Reporter (AH&MLR) are an excellent tool. For those readers who are unfa- miliar with the AH&MLR a small digression may help here. There is a profound difficulty with legal texts and that is that they very quickly become outdated because of the rapidity of change within the law. The fact that CCH Australia has published a second edition of Law

for the Nursing Profession barely two years after the first is testament to this problem. Legal pub- lishers have a remedy for this problem in the form of loose-leaf services which are effectively books published in loose-leaf folders. The publisher then provides an update service by up-dating particular pages as required. The problem is that such services are relatively very expensive. The point of this digression is to alert readers to the existence of the AH&MLR because it provides the most com- prehensive and current treatment of the subject area and because Law for the Nursing Profession is frequently cross-referenced to it and is written in a very similar format.

The style of presentation of Law for the Nursing Profession makes it both very readable and ‘user-friendly’ in the sense that it is very easy to find the information you are seeking. The book adopts a national perspective explaining the law in each of Australia’s several jurisdictions (ie the states, the commonwealth and its territories). Given both the distribution of powers between states and commonwealth and the extent of dif- ferences between states in law relevant to the provision of health care, such a perspective con- tributes enormously to the usefulness of the book.

For those readers who are familiar with the first edition of Lawfor the Nursing Profession, the changes in the second edition will be of interest. The chapters on consent and negligence have been revised to take account of recent cases and the chapter on mental health has been revised par- ticularly to take account of legislative changes in NSW.

Law for the Nursing Profession and Allied Health Professionals is a book that will provide nurses and allied health care professionals with a clear and comprehensive account of their re- sponsibilities at law in a highly readable style. As such, it would be a very valuable addition to every nurse’s library.

John Field Senior Lecturer, School of Health

University of New England, Armidale