Adapting legal principles to clinical nurse practice

This chapter describes the rationale for the development of a pre-registration course in law for nurses. Although there is only limited research evidence on the outcomes and effectiveness of legal teaching and learning for nursing practice there are legislated requirements for legal competence in practice. Decisions about core legal content in a nursing program have generally been developed from legal traditions and legal constructs. It is proposed that these are not the same as nurse practice constructs resulting in a theory-practice gap which is evident in the area of taught legal theory and real world practice problems. The result is practitioner anxiety and fear of legal consequences. By adapting legal concepts to nursing theory and nursing practice it is anticipated that will reduce this practitioner anxiety and lessen the theory practice gap.