Book Reviews
Health Care and the Law
Wallace, Meg
ISBN: 0-455217-52-1 2001 714 pages Lawbook Co. Pyrmont, NSW
Carol Grech
Senior Lecturer, School of Nursing and Midwifery,
University of South Australia, SA
First published in 1991, Health Care and the Law was originally written for nurses as an introductory legal text that outlined basic principles of health care law. Now in its third edition, this book has evolved as a reference to cater for a much wider health practitioner audience interested in increasing their knowledge and understanding of health related law. Wallace, combining her experiences as a registered nurse, academic, lawyer and now Senior Legal Adviser to the Australian Capital Territory Department of Justice and Community Safety, is well placed to provide an authoritative account on law and health. Importantly, Wallace has drawn on these experiences to ensure that the content addresses practice issues commonly encountered by health care workers, and those already familiar with previous editions, will find this latest release a worthy addition to the Australian medio-legal literature.
Like its previous editions, the content of this book is organised around logically ordered chapters where each paragraph is numbered in accordance with the legal style adopted for easy reference. Key terms, however, no longer appear at the beginning of each chapter, but this is compensated by a very comprehensive index system, which should ensure that all readers are able to locate relevant information. A comprehensive list of pertinent health related legislation also provides a useful guide for those wishing to trace specific statutes.
The first three chapters offer a general overview of the legal system including sources of Australian law, the division of courts and their jurisdiction, dispute resolution through the court system, legal reasoning, administrative and common law. This information provides a useful basis for understanding the more specific health law related content in the following chapters. The strength of this book lies in its practical application of the law to the every day practices of health care professionals across all fields and specialty settings.
Education and access to information about health and illness has led to a more informed, and sometimes litigious prone, public. Notwithstanding this feature of contemporary health service delivery, everyone involved in the education, administration and delivery of such services must understand and uphold the rights of their consumers. To this end, those chapters dealing with consent have been expanded in this latest edition and consent to health care is clearly delineated between those classified as competent adults as opposed to consent by those considered 'incompetent' at law. Similarly, negligence, record keeping, who owns medical records, privacy, health carers' duty of confidentiality, disclosure and defamation are covered in easily understood terms with case studies included to illustrate salient points.
Medication related adverse events are a common problem in contemporary health care and it is vital that those prescribing, supplying and administering drugs have a sound understanding of the legislation underpinning these activities. This text addresses statutory law concerning drugs as well as pointing out some specific considerations for health professionals to ensure that they take reasonable care to prevent harm from negligent handling and administration of medications. Again, the inclusion of case studies, from many different parts of the world, serves to highlight the risk of error doctors and nurses may be exposed to under various circumstances.
Other core topics covered include holding custody of a patient's property, employment contract and contract to provide a health care service, accident and injury in the workplace, regulation and licensure and the function and power of registration boards. Criminal law, as it relates to health care is well explained, and Chapter 15 contains an excellent overview of the coronial inquest, and provides essential reading for all practitioners who may be called to provide evidence to the coroner.
The final chapters address a broad range of issues covering notifiable diseases, reporting of child abuse, domestic violence, transplantation of human tissue from both live and dead donors, human rights inclusive of the rights of health care workers and their clients, and a discussion on decision making on law and ethics.
On the down side, and not an uncommon problem with reference books dealing with this subject matter, is that already some of the legislation referred to is outdated. Nevertheless, the table of statutes provided and the reference sources listed for further investigation should ensure that readers are able to access the most current legislation. For those wishing to explore further case law, the list of additional cases on negligence listed in Appendix 2 will provide a useful directory.
The bottom line, an intelligent, well researched and pertinent reference for anyone involved in the study, education and provision of health care.
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