3 Qualities of a Trauma RN benefiting your Personal Injury Case
The foundation of most trauma trained RN’s is that we are first a critical care RN. Go read last week’s article How MSICU RN Qualities Benefit a Medical Negligence Case to learn more!
So, what does a trauma trained RN have that a MSICU RN does not?
One of the main differences in these two nursing worlds is the client population. People who end up in a Trauma ICU are victims of a variety of traumas, including motor vehicle accidents, bicycle accidents, gunshot wounds, stab wounds, asphyxiation, sports injuries, and more.
Caring for clients with sustained injuries means that trauma nurses are trained to think about;
prioritization and focus on pertinent injury.
physics, aka the cause of injury.
evaluation for secondary injury.
These three qualities obtained from ICU Trauma nursing can provide a lot of insight from your Legal Nurse when working on a Personal Injury or Medical Malpractice case. In comparison to other types of nursing, trauma nursing provides a legal nurse consultant expertise and insight to traumatic injuries which is what personal injury cases are all about.
The start of any trauma case is the infliction of injury, what we like to call damages in the legal world. When a trauma nurse is triaging and treating a client, we must be able to prioritize and focus on the injury at hand, so we can stabilize them. Once a client is stabilized, we begin a more in-depth assessment and evaluation of their entire physical body. This prioritization process can be translated into legal nurse work, as a trauma nurse can easily prioritize and focus on the injury which the attorney is basing their case. Medical records often contain a lot of distractions, with this skill a trauma nurse can easily ignore these distractions, pick up any pertinent clues related to case, and focus on building the case based off the clients ’damages.
During the initial phase of a trauma, the nurse is trained to critically think about the accident, how the injury was sustained, the physics of the insult, evaluation for secondary injuries, and knows how to triage and treat these clients. With this experience we come well prepared to assist in evaluating a personal injury case. As a trauma nurse I understand and have the capability to evaluate: What is their past medical history? Current chief complaint from the sustained injury? Does it make sense? For example, if a client is suffering an injury from a MVA, do their complaints fit the physics of the accident? Is this injury possible from that event? Do they have a past medical history that this would be considered an aggravation rather than a causation? This all comes down to the physics of the accident, and this is something trauma nurses critically think through when triaging a patient, therefore we already have this skill set ready to be utilized by attorneys in their personal injury cases.
Once a trauma patient is stabilized, we continue critically thinking through the physics of the injury. Are there any injuries that could have been overlooked in the initial triage? How was this accident described by the first responders? Where should I continue to monitor for any further damages? I have not done research on this topic, but based on personal experiences, as a nurse as well as an accident victim, I can presume that secondary injuries are often overlooked or disregarded.
In addition to understanding the physics of an injury, trauma nurses also understand the severity of an injury, the risks of an injury, what the recovery will look like, and how these events affect clients as well as their families.
An example of identifying a risk and outcome of an injury can be demonstrated when discussing strokes that seem to happen out of nowhere a few days after a motor vehicle accident. Often when clients are in severe motor vehicle accidents they sustain a large bone fracture, like their femur or hip. When one of these large bones break that client becomes at risk for fat emboli, which can present as a stroke a few days after an accident or surgery. In these cases, the stroke can be directly related to the sustained injury, which increases the damages and suffering to the client.
Personal injury cases can be complex and involved, having a trauma nurse behind the scenes on your team can help you work through each personal injury case effectively and efficiently. There are many ways an experienced Trauma Nurse can help you on your personal injury or medical malpractice case, this article is to highlight three qualities a trauma nurse will bring to you and your clients benefit, particularly for your next personal injury case.
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Last weeks article, How MSICU RN Qualities Benefit a Medical Negligence Case https://www.rn-consultant.com/post/how-msicu-rn-qualities-benefit-a-medical-negligence-case
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