AHPRA Advertising for Nurses and Midwives: The Rules Most Practices Overlook

Nurses and midwives follow the same section 133 advertising rules as every registered profession. On top of that sit 2 layers most practices never read. The first is title protection, which means only registered people may call themselves a nurse or midwife. In 2024/25 Ahpra received 87 offence complaints about nurses, and 71 of them were about protected titles. Only 13 were about advertising. For midwives, all 7 were about titles. The second layer is the cosmetic guidelines that started on 2 September 2025. If your ad names a nurse who does a higher risk procedure, it must now show that nurse's registration number. So the rule you are most likely to miss sits in the word "nurse" on your team page.

Which AHPRA advertising rules apply to nurses and midwives?

You have 3 sets of rules, stacked on top of each other.

The first set is section 133 of the National Law, the law behind AHPRA. It applies to anyone who advertises a registered health service, whatever your profession. It has 5 grounds, which we covered in the AHPRA advertising guidelines hub. You must not make false or misleading claims. You must not offer gifts or discounts without stating the terms. You must not use testimonials. You must not make people expect too much from a treatment. And you must not push people to use a service they do not need. The maximum penalty is $60,000 for a person and $120,000 for a company.

The second set is title protection, in sections 113 to 120. Many nurse and midwife practices skip this one, because it does not look like an ad rule. But it works like one. Section 113 makes it an offence to "take or use a title in the Table to this section, in a way that could be reasonably expected to induce a belief the person is registered under this Law in the health profession listed beside the title in the Table, unless the person is registered in the profession". In plain words, you cannot use a protected title in a way that makes people think you are registered when you are not. The Table lists 6 titles for these 2 professions.

Look at the penalty, because it is harsher than the advertising one. For a person, section 113 carries "$60,000 or 3 years imprisonment or both". Section 133 carries the fine alone. So the law treats misusing the word "nurse" as more serious than a testimonial.

The third set is new. On 2 September 2025, Ahpra and the National Boards brought in 2 guidelines for non-surgical cosmetic procedures. One covers doing them and one covers advertising them. They apply to nurses. Ahpra's announcement even led with the Nursing and Midwifery Board Chair. We come to them in section five.

What does Ahpra actually pursue nurses and midwives for?

It is mostly titles, by a long way. The numbers are in Table 29 of the Ahpra and the National Boards annual report 2024/25. It breaks offence complaints down by profession and by the section of the law.

Look at the shape. For doctors, title and advertising complaints come in at nearly equal numbers, 75 against 68. For nurses it is 71 against 13. For midwives it is 7 against none. When Ahpra hears about a nurse or midwife under the offence sections, it is nearly always about a title someone had no right to use.

The same report shows how big each workforce is. There were 523,845 registered nurses at 30 June 2025. That is 54.6% of every registered health practitioner in Australia. There were 34,347 midwives. So the offence numbers are small next to the whole workforce. They are not small for the clinic that gets one.

Ahpra puts it simply in that report. "Only registered practitioners can use protected titles for their profession. It is also an offence to falsely claim to be qualified to practise in a health profession or hold yourself out as a registered health practitioner." On how it handles cases, it says: "In most cases we take an educative approach to achieve compliance quickly." That means it often starts by telling you what to fix. Of the offence complaints still open at 30 June 2025, 61.0% were about title protection. That figure covers every profession, and nursing is only one of them.

Which title mistakes end up on practice websites?

From reading clinic sites, I see 4 of them. Each one is a sentence on a team page or a service page. Each one is a title offence or a misleading claim before it is anything else.

The practice calls someone a nurse who is not registered as one. This might be a care assistant, a receptionist who "does the nursing side", or a dermal therapist. Section 113(2) covers this directly. A person must not "take or use a title in the Table in relation to another person (the second person), in a way that could be reasonably expected to induce a belief the second person is registered". In plain words, you cannot call someone else a nurse if they are not one. When your practice writes the bio, your practice is the one using the title. Your staff member does not need to have written a word.

The registration lapsed and the website did not. Registration renews every year, but team pages do not update themselves. Three of the 4 Nursing and Midwifery Board prosecutions finished in 2024/25 were about this. People kept using a nursing or midwifery title after their registration had lapsed or been given up. Does your website still say "registered nurse" about someone whose registration has ended? Then your site is now the advertisement Ahpra reads.

An enrolled nurse is described as a registered nurse. Both are registered in the nursing profession, so this is not usually a section 113 problem. It is a section 133(1)(a) problem, which bans anything "false, misleading or deceptive". The 2025 cosmetic advertising guidelines show how the regulator wants you to write the difference. Its own example formats are "Registered nurse (Division 1)" and "Enrolled nurse (Division 2)". The report counts 416,605 registered nurses and 69,687 enrolled nurses. They are different registrations, and your bio should say which one applies.

"Nurse practitioner" is used as a job description. It is a protected title in the Table. It is also an endorsement under section 95 that a nurse must hold. Your clinic cannot hand it out as a rank. Ahpra counts 3,194 nurse practitioner endorsements across Australia. Before your website uses the phrase, check that the register entry says it.

For midwives there is a fifth mistake, and it runs the other way. Doulas, birth workers and lactation consultants are not registered under the National Law. Your website might call one of them a midwife, or use "midwifery" for their service. Then you are using a protected title about another person. The only midwifery prosecution Ahpra finished in 2024/25 was about the words "midwife" and "midwifery" on social media. It did not succeed, and the next section explains why that still matters to you.

What happened in the four nursing prosecutions?

Ahpra finished 15 criminal prosecutions in 2024/25. Fourteen ended in a finding of guilt, and one did not. Four of the 15 were brought for the Nursing and Midwifery Board. Table 30 of the annual report lists them.

Here are 3 things to take from that table.

First, none of the 4 is about a testimonial, a discount or a before and after photo. All 4 are about a person and a word. That is what the chart in section 2 looks like when it reaches a courtroom.

Second, the legal costs can be far bigger than the fine. The Victorian nurse who kept the title after giving up registration was fined $5,000. They were also ordered to pay $21,421 in legal costs. People quote the fine, but they pay the costs.

Third, the midwife case failed, and the reason matters to you. The charge was about a description on social media. The magistrate was not satisfied beyond reasonable doubt. That does not mean the words were fine. It means the case could not be proved to the high bar a criminal court needs. Ahpra still brought the case, and the person still went to trial. So please do not read a lost case as permission.

Ahpra chose to put out a news release about the February 2025 case. It says the man "studied nursing for several years but never completed his nursing degree". It also says he "has never been registered as a nurse or in any other health profession under the National Law". He got a job by claiming to be a registered nurse. The employer noticed, checked the register, and reported him. The magistrate called these "serious offences". He said the health industry "requires both skill and trust to function". The employer did the same register check we described above. It protects you in both directions.

What changed for cosmetic nurses on 2 September 2025?

A lot changed, and our cosmetic clinic marketing guide covers most of it. Here is the part that is specific to nurses.

Two guidelines started that day. One is the Guidelines for practitioners who perform non-surgical cosmetic procedures. The other is the Guidelines for practitioners who advertise higher risk non-surgical cosmetic procedures. Ahpra's June 2025 release led with the Nursing and Midwifery Board Chair. It said: "Nurses will also be required to complete a set period of practice before expanding their scope to include non-surgical cosmetic procedures." The September release said it again. They were written with nurses in mind.

The ad guideline adds a rule that turns section 113 into a layout rule. "If advertising references a specific individual as performing higher risk cosmetic procedures, the advertising must include information about the health practitioner's registration details, including their registration number, so the registration status of the health practitioner is clear to the public." The guideline's own examples are about nurses: "AB (NMW000123456) Registered nurse (Division 1), nurse practitioner" and "EF (NMW000345678) Enrolled nurse (Division 2), general registration".

So your "meet our injector" page now needs the registration number next to the name. It also needs the division, and the endorsement if there is one. That means the title has to be right first. You cannot put a number next to a title the register does not back up.

On the day the guidelines started, Ahpra's CEO said: "Practitioners have been warned. If we find practitioners prioritising profits over patient care, we will not hesitate to act." The same annual report says Ahpra assessed 59 complaints about cosmetic procedure ads in 2024/25. It also checked the advertising of 93 practitioners and health services. All of that was before the new guideline existed.

What should a nurse-led practice check this week?

Here are 6 checks. All of them are just reading, and you do not need a consultant for any of them.

If the first check finds a mismatch, fix your website before anything else. A wrong title is the only item on this list with prison in the penalty clause. If the rest of the page has problems too, what gets a healthcare website flagged has the compliant rewrites.

What can this post not tell you?

There are 3 limits, so you do not read too much into the numbers.

The 87 and the 7 are complaints received, and none of them are proven offences. Table 29 counts what came in. The report's own footnote says it covers "All offences from sections 113-136 of the National Law". People can complain about registered practitioners, unregistered people and companies. A complaint shows you where attention goes. It does not tell you how many people were found guilty.

The sources we saved do not give the "set period of practice" for cosmetic nurses as a number. Ahpra's releases only say a set period. The guideline on doing the procedures sets the number. We have not quoted one because we did not check one. Please read the guideline itself for it, rather than a blog.

We have not seen your website. The 4 mistakes in section 3 come from reading clinic sites. They are patterns we saw, and they are not hard data. Your site may have none of them, or it may have a fifth. The register check takes a minute per name. It is the only way to know for sure.

What the numbers do say is simple. For nurses and midwives, the rule that bites is the one about who you say you are. Get your titles right. Put the registration numbers where the new guideline asks for them. Then the section 133 check becomes the easy part.