How to Simplify Complex Legal Nurse Consultant Jobs

At a banquet in Spain, Christopher Columbus was seated at a place of honor. If he had not discovered the New World, a jealous noble asked him, wouldn’t somebody else have done so? Instead of replying, Columbus picked up an egg and challenged the guests to make it stand on one end. No one met his challenge. Columbus then smashed the egg against the table and stood it on the flattened end. Columbus’s message was that once someone showed the way, anyone could follow, but not everyone could discover the way.

A successful Certified Legal Nurse Consultant wants to be like Columbus. You want other CLNC^® consultants to look at your work product for legal nurse consultant jobs and say it looks easy – anyone could have discovered the way. You can accomplish this by making your cases look as simple as possible to the casual observer.

By nature, our cases are not simple; they are complex. On top of that, we often deal with voluminous electronic medical records, as well as a wide variety of other documents. To keep from getting distracted by the complexities, you must be able to focus and stay focused throughout your review. You must also break complex cases down to their most basic level.

Only if you simplify the issues will the jurors grasp them. Jurors are not clinicians. Complex healthcare issues present them with an enormous challenge for which they have no training or experience. They quickly lose their appetite for the complex and unfocused and get distracted by the withdrawal symptoms of being separated from their cell phones. They are more likely to feast on your opinions if the opinions are focused and simple.

Many years ago, an attorney taught me that there is no point in trying to prove 12 points in a case if you can prevail by proving only three. I had reviewed a case for the same attorney. The case involved the failure to timely and appropriately treat an emergency department (ED) pediatric patient suffering from an epidural hematoma. After I communicated to the attorney all the parameters that should have been assessed by the ED nurse, he said, “I won’t emphasize the failure to take the child’s temperature. I’m not sure the jurors will get the significance of that deviation. Instead, I’m going to focus on the obvious failure to assess the child’s neurological status.” While I was clinically correct in pointing out the significance of the failure to assess temperature, he was also right – he would not have to prove that deviation to win.

The danger in pointing out too many issues in your legal nurse consultant jobs is that the attorney might end up losing the whole case. If the jurors are keeping score and the attorney wins the three major points but loses six minor ones, the odds are he’ll lose. Don’t emphasize minor points the attorney could easily lose – find the major strengths and keep coming back to those.

A well-known Texas plaintiff malpractice attorney was trying a case. The young attorneys from the opposing attorney’s office who observed the trial announced to their colleagues that they were unimpressed with this well renowned attorney. Yet a couple of weeks later, he won a verdict of $12,000,000 for the plaintiff. What had failed to impress the less experienced attorneys had obviously worked with the jury! That is why this attorney is so successful – he makes the difficult appear simple. He culls the case down to the basics, finds a focus and never strays from it.

This is what Certified Legal Nurse Consultants should always strive toward in our own businesses. The more we focus and simplify legal nurse consultant jobs, the more the attorney will be able to do so in the courtroom. The process can and should start with us. As Kahlil Gibran said, “The obvious is that which is never seen until someone expresses it simply.”

Success Is Yours!

P.S. Comment and share how you make complex legal nurse consultant jobs seem simple.