Vol. 2, Issue 6, Part O (2016)

Abstract
Nursing involves the protection, promotion and optimization of health and prevention of illness and injury, alleviation of suffering through the diagnosis and treatment of human responses, and advocacy in health care for individuals, families, communities, and populations. The important necessity for the nurse is to be aware of legal aspects associated with caring and helping people in the health care industry today unfortunately, more negligence cases are occurring and in Western societies less people want to get into the health care field, fearing legal aspects and the inevitable law suits. The present cross sectional descriptive study was conducted with an aim to identify the knowledge regarding medico legal issues among 15 staff nurses and 15 nursing students. Samples were selected by using simple random sampling technique. Structured questionnaire was used for collecting information from the respondents. The results were revealed that majority 9(60%) staff nurses and Nursing student’s moderately adequate knowledge regarding medico legal issues. The study concluded that there is a need to conduct in-service education programme on medico legal aspects in delivery of care.