[NPInfo] Dumb question

[Diana Galler]

My brother-in-law is a top-notch attorney who has handled several big medical cases in the past and, although he has had nurses review medial documentation and testify when needed, he has never used a legal Nurse Consultant or anyone with credentials/certifications in the medical-legal field. He believes years of nursing experience and a lot of medical knowledge (especially in a specialty medical field) make the best consultants and witnesses. He feels all these programs are worthless and Told me not to bother. The one company that approached me to consult for them never asked about credentials/certificate-- just how many years of experience I had and what my nursing background was.
  Dena Galler

Stephanie Walker <stephanie2u at optonline.net> wrote:
  Hi Linda,

I am going to put in my two bits and it isn't going to sound very 
positive, but that's because I considered going this route, and then 
decided against it, so take what I say with a grain of salt. I have a 
paralegal certificate, and the attorneys who taught my paralegal 
courses thought my writing skills were top-notch. These courses gave 
me a good understanding of the legal issues relating to malpractice, 
product liability, personal injury lawsuits, torts etc., the court 
system and legal document production.

This is what turned me off:

There are very few job opportunities in this area (legal nurse 
consultant) and virtually none for beginners. You would have to find 
someplace willing to put in the time to train you apprentice-style, 
and most legal offices are not set up for that. There is a steep 
learning curve as you need a good working knowledge of the law, 
particularly the laws of your state, even though you would be helping 
the attorney with the medical aspects.

It is not really feasible to be self-employed without a lot of 
experience and having some attorney connections to start you off. It 
might take as many as 5 years to build up your own business before 
you could quit your day job. The work product you put out has to be 
very good since otherwise attorneys will not want to pay for it.

If you work for a trial attorney, there could be long hours of 
overtime during periods of trial preparation. Some of the work is 
very tedious. If you enjoy working with people, there would not be as 
much of the personal contact we have with patients as NPs.

I can see that an occasional attorney could be even more difficult to 
work for than physicians (personality, ego issues, poor people 
skills, stingy, etc).

For myself, I began to doubt that the work would be emotionally 
satisfying. Would I want to put hours of work into compiling and 
analyzing medical records, constructing chronologies, writing up 
summaries, and helping an attorney build a case and then have it 
dropped? It might have been dropped because it wasn't a sound case to 
begin with or maybe it was a good case and the attorney just couldn't 
develop enough evidence. The legal system is not very fair and I find 
that troubling since I like to see people get justice. These are my 
own personal feelings based on my learning experiences. I don't 
intend to sound like a wet blanket, but there are certain realities 
to any occupation that it helps to know about before you start.

But don't let me discourage you--if you want to do a little research 
without spending any bucks, sign up for one of the Yahoo listserves 
for LNC's, like legalmed or LNCExchange. You can lurk and get an idea 
what LNC's do. You might find it's just the thing for you. There are 
nurses working in many different areas involving the law. Some of the 
work seems intriguing. Just go to yahoo.com and Groups, and search 
using those names. You can receive a daily digest that won't clog 
your in-box.

Stephanie




On Apr 15, 2008, at 1:31 PM, Linda Marie De Zago wrote:
> What's the difference between earning a MS in health law and 
> becoming a
> certified nurse legal consultant? Is it better paying, more 
> respected, earn
> me more opportunities, etc?
>
>
>
> Respectfully,
>
>
>
> Linda Marie De Zago, MS, ARNP-C
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> NPInfo mailing list
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> http://lists.nurse.net/mailman/listinfo/npinfo
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