“I am a nurse” can mean so many different things.
I may be a master of none, but with my skill set I am often better than a master of one.
From education to experience every nurse is certainly unique. The education and experience that makes up a nurse contributes to the transition and success of a Legal Nurse Consultant.
Each specialized area of nursing comes with unique characteristics and training: critical care, trauma, neurological, cardiac, medical, surgical, procedural, post anesthesia, long term care, hospice, palliative, pediatrics, neonatal, labor & delivery, care coordination, home health, and these are just the first bunch of nursing specialties that come to mind.
So how does an attorney even begin to choose a LNC?
I haven’t personally asked, but my assumption, one qualifying factor is the nurse specializes in an area of health that the attorney’s legal practice is focused in. Makes sense. A L&D or neonatal nurse for a birth injury case, an ICU nurse for a sepsis related case, a nursing home nurse for a long-term care case, and so on.
As a R.N. with over ten years of experience working in a variety of specialized units and a variety of hospitals, I like to consider myself the “jack of all trades” nurse.
I may be a master of none, but with my skill set I am often better than a master of one.
This may sound silly at first, but when it is truly thought about a Legal Nurse Consultant with a variety of experience and knowledge is more prepared to handle a mixture of legal cases. Working in a variety of nursing specialty units has allowed me, as a RN, to fully grasp the differences in types of care, and therefore the different standards that comes with that care. Furthermore, working in 11 different hospitals has taught me that different facilities have different treatment protocols for the same issues, and these facilities also come with varying policies, protocols, and procedures. All the variety in my career has taught me to evaluate the entirety of the case I am evaluating, from medical negligence to personal injury.
One reason I have worked in such a variation of hospital settings is my yearning for knowledge and growth; this drive has brought me to cross train into new units, then travel nursing, and finally float pool nursing. Different areas of nursing that I have been trained and practiced in are:
Long Term Acute Care (LTAC)
Intensive Care (ICU)
Med surg ICU
Neuro ICU
Trauma ICU
Cardiac ICU
Progressive Care (PCU) - “Step Down”
Procedural
Inpatient
Outpatient
Care Coordination
Over the next weeks I will break down each of these specialties and their unique characteristics, which contribute to being the best Legal Nurse Consultant.
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