Specialist healthcare law for nurses: an introduction.

Nurses are increasingly concerned with legal and ethical dilemmas in clinical decision-making. The law impacts across a wide range of issues in nursing practice. It is important for healthcare professionals to be aware of the way in which the law regulates their professional practice. In this article John Tingle and Jean McHale introduce a new series of articles on law for nurses. The series will feature contributions by legal academics who are specialists in the area of healthcare law. The series will outline basic issues such as the English legal system. It will then consider a wide range of issues, including nursing negligence, legal issues of expanded role, patient safety, consent to treatment, adults lacking mental capacity, mental health law, end-of-life decision-making, law and nursing research, resource allocation law and human rights.