Ahpra's 15 National Boards, 16 professions and the protected titles each controls — and the three acts that are actually restricted

Fifteen National Boards regulate sixteen health professions in Australia. The arithmetic is not an error: the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia covers two professions, nurse and midwife, and Ahpra’s register lists them separately.

The more important number is three. Australia protects dozens of professional titles by criminal statute — and restricts exactly three clinical acts. For every other profession in the scheme, the name is protected and the activity is not. That distinction decides what an unregistered overseas-qualified practitioner can and cannot lawfully do while their registration is pending, and almost nobody explains it.

The fifteen boards

Ahpra’s own statement: “Ahpra works in partnership with 15 National Boards to implement the National Registration and Accreditation Scheme (the National Scheme). The National Scheme regulates 16 health professions, helping to protect the public by setting standards and policies that all registered health practitioners must meet.”

The boards, in Ahpra’s own naming:

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Practice Board of Australia · Chinese Medicine Board of Australia · Chiropractic Board of Australia · Dental Board of Australia · Medical Board of Australia · Medical Radiation Practice Board of Australia · Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia · Occupational Therapy Board of Australia · Optometry Board of Australia · Osteopathy Board of Australia · Paramedicine Board of Australia · Pharmacy Board of Australia · Physiotherapy Board of Australia · Podiatry Board of Australia · Psychology Board of Australia.

Four professions are further split inside the register. Ahpra: “Within the registers, Chinese medicine, dental, medical radiation and nursing professions are further categorised into divisions” — nursing, for instance, into “Registered nurse (Division 1)” and “Enrolled nurse (Division 2)”. The division you are registered in, not the profession name, is what an employer reads. That mapping is worked through in enrolled nurse versus registered nurse.

The scheme reached its current shape in three steps, on Ahpra’s account: ten professions became nationally regulated on 1 July 2010 (18 October in Western Australia), “In July 2012, four additional professions joined the National Scheme”, and “In December 2018, paramedicine became the newest profession to join the scheme.”

What a protected title legally is

Ahpra’s plain-language version:

“In Australia, the titles of registered health professions are ‘protected’ by law… Further, it’s a criminal offence for someone who isn’t a registered health practitioner to use a protected or specialist title. There are significant penalties if they do, including possible jail time.”

The statutory anchor: “The National Law protects the public by ensuring that only registered health practitioners who are suitably trained and qualified use titles protected under sections 113-119 of the National Law.” And the penalties, from Ahpra’s most recently reviewed offences page: “a fine of up to $60,000 per offence for an individual or $120,000 per offence for a corporation, and/or a maximum three-year term of imprisonment per offence.”

Ahpra also names a separate offence that catches people who avoid the word itself — holding out: “It is unlawful for someone to claim to be a registered health practitioner when they are not… Holding out includes using a title, name, initial, symbol, word or description that could be reasonably understood that an individual is a health practitioner or qualified to practise in a registered health profession.”

The titles, by profession

Quoted from Ahpra’s own table. Note that several professions protect more than one title, and several of the extra titles are the ones people assume are generic.

Profession	Protected titles
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health practice	Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Practitioner; Aboriginal Health Practitioner; Torres Strait Islander Health Practitioner
Chinese medicine	Chinese medicine practitioner; Chinese herbal dispenser; Chinese herbal medicine practitioner; Oriental medicine practitioner; Acupuncturist
Chiropractic	Chiropractor
Dental	Dentist; Dental therapist; Dental hygienist; Dental prosthetist; Oral health therapist
Medical	Medical practitioner; Surgeon
Medical radiation practice	Medical radiation practitioner; Diagnostic radiographer; Medical imaging technologist; Radiographer; Nuclear medicine scientist; Nuclear medicine technologist; Radiation therapist
Midwifery	Midwife; Midwife practitioner
Nursing	Nurse; Registered nurse; Nurse practitioner; Enrolled nurse
Occupational therapy	Occupational therapist
Optometry	Optometrist; Optician
Osteopathy	Osteopath
Paramedicine	Paramedic
Pharmacy	Pharmacist; Pharmaceutical chemist
Physiotherapy	Physiotherapist; Physical therapist
Podiatry	Podiatrist; Chiropodist
Psychology	Psychologist

Five of those rows routinely surprise people. “Optician” is protected, not just optometrist. “Physical therapist” is protected, so the American term is captured in Australia. “Chiropodist” and “pharmaceutical chemist” are protected as historical synonyms. And on the nursing side, “nurse” on its own is protected, not merely “registered nurse”.

Three further protections sit outside the table. Ahpra “protects the specialist titles for the recognised specialties approved by the Ministerial Council for medical practitioners, dental practitioners and podiatrists”. Acupuncturist extends to endorsement holders: “These practitioners, along with registered Chinese medicine practitioners, are eligible to use the protected title ‘acupuncturist’.” And surgeon was narrowed by a specific amendment:

“The only medical practitioners who can call themselves ‘surgeon’ are those holding specialist registration in surgery, obstetrics and gynaecology, or ophthalmology. Restricting the use of the title surgeon in the medical profession follows an amendment to the National Law that introduces a new section 115A.”

Ahpra adds that the new section “does not change the rules for use of protected titles by health practitioners with specialist registration in the dental and podiatry professions, or for dentists using the title dental surgeon”, and flags a commencement caveat: “The amendment is expected to take effect in NSW, SA and WA following state legislative processes.”

Two titles that are not protected. “Doctor is not a protected title, but advertisers must be careful about how they use ‘Doctor’ or ‘Dr’… If the title ‘Dr’ is used in advertising and does not refer to a registered medical practitioner, then (regardless of whether a doctorate degree or PhD is held) it should be made clear which profession the practitioner is registered in, for example Dr Lee (osteopath).” And, in a 2021 Ahpra news item written before s 115A, “Cosmetic surgeon is not a protected specialist title.”

The part almost nobody explains: title protection is not practice restriction

Ahpra’s offences page treats these as two different crimes, and the second list is exhaustive and short.

“Restricted acts are health procedures or services that can only be performed by specific kinds of registered health professional.”

There are three of them:

1. Restricted dental acts — “irreversible procedures on the teeth, jaw and associated structures”, performable only by a registered dental or medical practitioner, a supervised student, someone “ordered to do so by a dentist or dental prosthetist”, or a person otherwise authorised.
2. Restricted prescription of optical appliances — a registered optometrist or medical practitioner, “an orthoptist if the optical appliance is spectacles and whose name is recorded in the Register of Orthoptists”, or otherwise authorised.
3. Manipulation of the cervical spine — “moving the joints beyond a person’s usual physiological range of motion using a high velocity, low amplitude thrust”, performable by “a chiropractor, osteopath, medical practitioner or physiotherapist”, a supervised student, or otherwise authorised.

That is the whole list. The consequences run in both directions and both are counter-intuitive:

• For psychology, physiotherapy (other than neck manipulation), occupational therapy, pharmacy, podiatry, Chinese medicine, paramedicine, medical radiation practice, nursing and midwifery, the National Law protects the title and does not restrict the underlying activity. An unregistered person who does not use the title and does not hold out as registered is not committing a title offence by doing the work. That does not make it lawful — other statutes, employer requirements, Medicare, insurance, poisons and radiation legislation, and state law all bite — but the National Law’s title provisions are not what is stopping them.
• Cervical spine manipulation is restricted across four professions at once, so the restriction attaches to the act, not to any single title. And orthoptists, who are not a registered profession under the National Law and hold no protected title at all, are expressly authorised to prescribe spectacles.

We have not found a sentence in which Ahpra says “the title is protected but the practice is not”, and we are not going to attribute one to it. The distinction is established structurally — two separate offence categories, and a restricted-act list of exactly three items — rather than by a single quotable line.

How to read all of this if you trained overseas

Registration, not title, is the gate. Ahpra: “Anyone who calls themselves any of the ‘protected titles’ in the National Law, such as ‘chiropractor’, ‘medical practitioner’, ‘midwife’ or ‘psychologist’, must be registered with the corresponding National Board.” Nothing in your overseas qualification, however senior, entitles you to the title before the Board says so.

Getting a skills assessment is not registration, and registration is not a job. Three separate gates, described in assessment, licence and admission, and the health professions are where the gap between them is widest — see regulators block the register, not the rules.

Ahpra publishes no flat list of approved courses. The only public entry point is the portal search component, which returns results rather than a downloadable list. What that means for anyone trying to check a programme is in which AU/NZ regulators publish course lists openly and why there is no single list of recognised qualifications.

The five core registration standards apply to all sixteen professions. Ahpra: “The 16 health professions regulated under the National Scheme each have five core registration standards.” English language skills is one of them, and two boards run their own version of it — see English language requirements, regulator by regulator.

What this page does not do

It does not tell you whether you may use a title, and getting that wrong is a criminal matter rather than an administrative one. The tables above were read from Ahpra’s own pages on 3 September 2026; the protected-title table sits on a page Ahpra states was last reviewed on 21 January 2022, and a second Ahpra table reviewed on 24 April 2026 omits “surgeon” from the medical row that the 2022 table includes — a discrepancy we are flagging rather than resolving. Section numbers are given by Ahpra as ranges (ss 113–119 for titles, ss 113–123 for the full set of offences, s 115A for surgeon); Ahpra does not publish a per-profession subsection, and we have not gone behind its pages to the statute. If a title question matters legally, read the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law as it applies in your state and take advice. This site provides no clinical advice and no legal advice.