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

AHPRA advertising rules for nurses and midwives are the same section 133 rules every registered profession lives under, plus two layers most practices never read. The first is title protection. 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 took effect on 2 September 2025. If an ad names a nurse who performs a higher risk procedure, it must now carry that nurse's registration number. So the rule most practices overlook is not in the ad copy. It is in the word "nurse" on the team page.

Which AHPRA advertising rules apply to nurses and midwives?

Three sets, stacked on top of each other.

The first set is section 133 of the National Law. It applies to anyone who advertises a regulated health service, and it does not care which profession you are. The five grounds are the ones we covered in the AHPRA advertising guidelines hub: false or misleading claims, inducements without terms, testimonials, unreasonable expectations of treatment, and encouraging unnecessary use. The maximum penalty is $60,000 for an individual and $120,000 for a body corporate.

The second set is title protection, sections 113 to 120. This is the one nursing and midwifery practices skip, because it does not look like an advertising rule. It is. 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". The Table lists six titles for these two professions.

Read the penalty line, because it is harsher than the advertising one. Section 113 carries, for an individual, "$60,000 or 3 years imprisonment or both". Section 133 carries the fine alone. Misusing the word "nurse" is treated as more serious than a testimonial.

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

What does Ahpra actually pursue nurses and midwives for?

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 Act.

Look at the shape. For doctors, title and advertising complaints arrive in nearly equal numbers, 75 against 68. For nurses it is 71 against 13. For midwives it is 7 against nothing. When Ahpra hears about a nurse or a midwife under the offence sections, it is nearly always about a title someone was not entitled to.

The same report gives the scale of the professions. There were 523,845 registered nurses at 30 June 2025, which is 54.6% of every registered health practitioner in Australia. There were 34,347 midwives. So the offence numbers are small against the workforce. They are not small against the practices that get one.

Ahpra's own framing in that report is short. "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." And on how it handles the cases: "In most cases we take an educative approach to achieve compliance quickly." Of the offence complaints still open at 30 June 2025, 61.0% were title protection matters. Across every profession, not just nursing.

Which title mistakes end up on practice websites?

Four, from reading clinic sites. 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. A care assistant, a receptionist who "does the nursing side", 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". The practice that writes the bio is the person using the title in relation to another person. The staff member need not have written a word.

The registration lapsed and the website did not. Registration renews every year. Team pages do not. Three of the four Nursing and Midwifery Board prosecutions completed in 2024/25 were about this. People kept using a nursing or midwifery title after registration had lapsed or been given up. If your website still says "registered nurse" about someone whose registration has ended, the 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, "false, misleading or deceptive". The 2025 cosmetic advertising guidelines show how the regulator expects the difference to be written: "Registered nurse (Division 1)" and "Enrolled nurse (Division 2)" are its own example formats. The report counts 416,605 registered nurses and 69,687 enrolled nurses. They are different registrations, and a bio should say which.

"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. A practice cannot award it as a seniority level. Ahpra counts 3,194 nurse practitioner endorsements nationally. Before the website uses the phrase, check the register entry says it.

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

What happened in the four nursing prosecutions?

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

Three things to take from that table.

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

Second, the costs order can dwarf the fine. The Victorian nurse who kept the title after surrendering registration was fined $5,000 and ordered to pay $21,421 in legal costs. The fine is the number people quote. The costs are the number they pay.

Third, the midwife case failed, and the reason matters. The charge was about a description on social media. The magistrate was not satisfied beyond reasonable doubt. That is not a finding that the words were fine. It is a finding that the prosecution could not prove the offence to the criminal standard. Ahpra brought the case anyway, and the person went to trial. A practice should not read a lost prosecution as permission.

The February 2025 case is the one Ahpra chose to put out a news release about. It says the man "studied nursing for several years but never completed his nursing degree" and "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" and said the health industry "requires both skill and trust to function". The employer's check is the same check we described above. It works in both directions.

What changed for cosmetic nurses on 2 September 2025?

A lot, and most of it is covered in our cosmetic clinic marketing guide. Here is the nursing-specific part.

Two guidelines came into effect that day: the Guidelines for practitioners who perform non-surgical cosmetic procedures and 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, and 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 repeated it. Nurses are the workforce these guidelines were written for.

The advertising guideline adds a rule that turns section 113 into a formatting 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 nurse-shaped: "AB (NMW000123456) Registered nurse (Division 1), nurse practitioner" and "EF (NMW000345678) Enrolled nurse (Division 2), general registration".

So the "meet our injector" page now needs the registration number next to the name, the division, and the endorsement if there is one. Which means the title has to be right first. You cannot format a number next to a title the register does not support.

Ahpra's CEO said on the day the guidelines started: "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 the advertising of cosmetic procedures in 2024/25. It also audited the advertising of 93 practitioners and health services. That was before the new guideline existed.

What should a nurse-led practice check this week?

Six checks. All of them are reading, and none of them need a consultant.

If the first check turns up a mismatch, fix the website before you do anything else. A wrong title is the one item on this list with imprisonment in the penalty clause. And 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?

Three limits, so you do not over-read the numbers.

The 87 and the 7 are complaints received, not offences proved. Table 29 counts what came in. The report's own footnote says it covers "All offences from sections 113-136 of the National Law", and complaints can be made about registered practitioners, unregistered people and companies. A complaint is a signal about where attention goes. It is not a conviction rate.

The "set period of practice" for cosmetic nurses is not given as a number in the sources we archived. Ahpra's releases say a set period. The performing guideline itself sets the number. We have not quoted one because we did not verify one, and you should read the guideline rather than a blog for it.

We have not seen your website. The four mistakes in section 3 come from reading clinic sites, and they are patterns, not statistics. Your site may have none of them. Or a fifth. The register check takes a minute per name, and it is the only way to know.

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