The Important Role of Legal Nurse Consultant

February 8, 2017 9:19 am

Legal Nurse Consultant

I am regularly approached by registered nurses who wish to enter the field of legal nurse consultant.  Over the years, I have helped train several nurses who went on to legal careers. Some of them went on to become paralegals; some lawyers; some nurse consultants.

A legal nurse consultant will regularly be involved in automobile negligence, insurance, medical malpractice, and product liability claims as well as providing support for medical administrative issues, medical information issues, and research issues.   Medical records must be gathered from all of the practitioners that have seen this patient of whatever type for a period of years. These records must then be examined to see if there are previous references to this injury and the result of those references.  The most organized way to accomplish this task is to gather the medical records and to create a detailed chronology of those records. A legal nurse consultant may or may not be called upon to gather the medical records. Usually that task belongs to someone else in the office. But whoever gathers them, two things must be made clear: that these are in fact all of the records and that they are accurate. Only then can an accurate detailed chronology be created. Once the chronology exists, we will know several things. We will know if there were previous complaints about this injury. We will know if there were previous treatments of this injury. We will know the status of the injury. We will know about the heath of our client up to and including the day of the incident. We will also have established the documentary trail from the date of the incident to the date of the injury. Lastly, we will know the diagnosis and the recommended treatment. We may even know what treatment has been rendered. With this information,  a legal nurse consultant will be able to assist his or her attorney with regard to the preparation of his or her case.

At Hohauser Kuchon we are fortunate to have a highly intelligent and hardworking  nurse on staff.  She assists us with medical documentation from the beginning of a case.  She attends medical depositions with our attorneys.  She is a vital resource.  Please take a moment to read Christa Constantino‘s biography.

Tags: accident, breach in standard of care, car accident, faulty elevator, injury, law firm, lawsuit, medical malpractice, medical records, negligence, personal injury