“Can I do that? Is it legal?” The Australian nurse’s cry for help

Australian registered nurses currently working in a broad variety of nursing areas are drawn from the former hospital-trained nurse system and tertiary educated university graduates. This population represent two very different educational preparations for practice. However, in regards to desiring “legal education,” they appear to be similar. There are constant requests for continuing education and high levels of anxiety about legal consequences in clinical practice. This article reports a study that attempted to identify the sources of that anxiety, identify gaps in learning, and seek direction for future law teaching strategies. However, the study found nurses’ anxiety was primarily related to system and organizational behaviors that they believed left them vulnerable. They lacked confidence in their capacity to defend themselves and grouped professional governance, legal, and discipline matters as a single threat, “the law.”