August 2009

I’ve blogged and blogged about the usefulness of the Adobe^® PDF (portable document format) file format and its usefulness to legal nurse consultants. For the longest time these files were pretty much free from attack by hackers and other malfeasors. Well, that’s all changed and Adobe Reader and Acrobat are now under attack. If you haven’t switched to one of the free or alternative PDF reader/creators, it’s time to take at least one step to help protect yourself from the hackers.

If you’re running Adobe versions 8 or higher, you’ll need to open your Adobe Reader or Adobe Professional, click Edit, Preferences and JavaScript. When you see the selection screen make sure that Enable Acrobat Javascript is unchecked (not selected) then click OK. This will protect you from at least one vulnerability that might allow a bad guy to take over your computer after you read a maliciously infected PDF.

Even after doing the above, whatever version of Adobe you’re running, you should use the “check for updates” function at least weekly and always make sure you’re on the latest Adobe build (8.1.4, 7.1.1, 9.1 and higher have security patches built in). Other alternative PDF reading/creating software programs have their own bugs, so it’s best to research them before selecting one for use in your legal nurse consulting business.

While we’re on the subject of Adobe, that brings up a reason to switch to the Firefox^® browser. Adobe’s popular Flash Player versions 9 and 10 have a vulnerability that only affects Internet Explorer^® (IE) users, not Firefox. Adobe should release a patch soon, but in the meantime – keep on using your Firefox browser instead of IE and if you’re using Flash Player make sure you check for updates on a regular basis.

As long as we’re talking Firefox – all Certified Legal Nurse Consultants should be using at least version 3.5.0 and preferably the most current 3.5.1. Make sure you go into Tools, Options, Advanced then Updates and make sure your Firefox is set to automatically check for updates. You can also force an update check by clicking Help and then Check for Updates.

Once you’ve downloaded the most current version, take the time to install a spell-checking feature to your Firefox forms completer function. To do so, start with the listing of Firefox filters and functions. Open Firefox and type about:config into the address box and then click the box that says “I’ll be careful.” Type spellcheck into the filter box and hit enter. If you right click layout.spellcheckDefault, click Modify and change the value to 2, once you restart Firefox the spell-checking function should work in most online forms.

Finally, did you know that you can duplicate an open Firefox tab by holding down the Ctrl key and dragging that tab onto a blank tab? This is a great tool when you’ve opened a page in your search results on Yahoo! or Google and want to go back to the original search results page. Any Certified Legal Nurse Consultant who’s not using iGoogle’s “Open search results in a new browser window” will certainly appreciate this Firefox function. Try it. If you have any other Firefox tips, I’d love to hear them.

Keep on techin’,

Tom

After working in a large clinic for 22 years, I retired. I was 48, my life was changing, my workplace was changing and I qualified for early retirement, so I took it. My family was growing up, and I began to wonder, “What am I going to do now?” Then I found Vickie Milazzo Institute’s LegalNurse.com website and became intrigued. I knew I had the experience as a nurse to become a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant – I decided to take the CLNC^® 6-Day Certification Seminar. Vickie’s CLNC^® Certification Program is the key to my CLNC^® success.

Becoming a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant has such a positive impact on my life. It spells freedom – more financial freedom, being able to work from home doing what I love to do any time I want, but also being able to walk away from it at 3:30 in the afternoon. I’m free to walk downstairs to find my husband in his office – he also works from home. (Separate offices work best for us during the day because of business phone calls and other distractions.) We are then free to choose what we want to do with the rest of our day.

When asked by other nurses if a career in legal nurse consulting can be successful, I repeat what Vickie told me, “Absolutely, if you’re passionate about it.”

Market, market, market, even when you’re busy. Anywhere I market my CLNC^® practice, I show up with independence and confidence, just like Vickie taught me. I walk in the door and say, “Here I am. I can help you.”

My CLNC^® business really took off when I located a group of attorneys and camped out on their door step. Today those attorneys are some of my best clients. One of the attorneys recently told me, “The reason I hired you is because I was tired of stepping over you when I came through the door in the morning.” We laugh about it now, but my persistence paid off.

In Vickie’s CLNC^® 6-Day Certification Program, she encourages her students to send out a newsletter to attorney-prospects and clients. My newsletter helps me connect with attorneys and I can count on receiving numerous phone calls each time I send one.

My CLNC^® consulting work is always interesting. Many RNs think legal nurse consultants consult only on medical malpractice or personal injury cases. Some of my favorite cases are the ones that I wouldn’t think I’d be involved in, like a murder trial or a legal malpractice case involving a will.

The case outcomes can also be very exciting. My first big attorney-client asked me to review a medical malpractice case for merit. I found a gross deviation in the standards of care and located an expert for the attorney. That case went to mediation and settled for a larger amount than anyone expected.

While that litigation was in progress, my attorney-client asked me to begin work on another case. A doctor had previously reviewed the case’s medical records, but when the attorney asked for my help, I discovered numerous things the doctor had overlooked. Then, right before the case went to trial, the attorney asked me to accompany him to court. When the defense expert denied the validity of a particular radiology report, I whispered to my attorney-client, “Trust me on this – show him this report.” The second report invalidated the medical expert for the defense and upended their case. My nursing experience and Vickie’s CLNC^® Certification Program were the biggest factors in winning the case.

A large part of my CLNC^® consulting success is due to Vickie’s enthusiasm and her encouraging words, such as “We Are Nurses and We Can Do Anything!^®”

Vickie’s CLNC^® Mentoring Program is another part of my CLNC^® consulting success. I enjoy working through the problems I encounter with the CLNC^® Mentors and contact them any time I’m stymied. It’s reassuring to brainstorm with these CLNC^® Pros.

What makes my CLNC^® business successful? By thinking outside the box, using my nursing skills and remembering Vickie’s CLNC^® training, I successfully evaluate cases and help my attorney-clients gain the best outcomes. I’m so excited about my CLNC^® career. I’m living my dream of being a successful CLNC^® consultant, having a great time and being rewarded financially for the work I do!

Bobbi Black, RN, CLNC is an independent CLNC^® consultant in Iowa with 30 years’ clinical nursing experience. She is owner and principal of A Legal Resource Service since 2001 and offers consulting services to both plaintiff and defense law firms.

P.S. Read more CLNC^® Success Stories and send your CLNC^® Success Story to feedback@LegalNurse.com.

P.P.S. Comment if you would like to congratulate Bobbi on her CLNC^® success.

During my polar bear watching trip, one of the naturalists, Richard, was often one of the first to spot a polar bear. Now, if they’re sitting next to the ship or licking the bow that’s pretty easy, but Richard could spot an off-white bear in a white environment as far as 2½ miles away. Everyone was in awe of him. Plus, it wasn’t just polar bears that he’d spot. We’d be scanning the ice flows for anything that looked like it might be alive and when Richard would spot a bear he’d tell me something like, “It’s lying on its belly, off the bow at 2:00, about a mile out, just past the two ivory gulls and to the left of the walrus with the cavity in its left tusk.”

Richard could see things that others could not and everyone commented on his ability to be the first to spot wildlife. What went uncommented on, however, was the fact that it was more than just his talent. He had a slight advantage because he started off as a birdwatcher. So in comparison to spotting and identifying tiny, quick-moving birds, the large polar bears were relatively easy. When we were on land, he’d spot Arctic foxes, reindeer (easy) and tell you about every bird that swooped by seemingly without looking at them directly.

It was when I stopped to watch Richard spot wildlife, that I noticed why he was so successful. He never stopped moving and searching. Richard was a combination of constant movement and stillness, starting on one side of the ship’s bridge, searching, moving to the other side, searching, moving outside to the observation deck (in his flip-flops) and searching. When he was moving, he moved quickly (even faster than Tom), but when he was searching, he was a portrait in stillness. Richard achieved the perfect balance of movement and stillness, one that I certainly envy – not just for polar bear spotting but for everyday work.

Other passengers and crew were also looking for wildlife but without the success rate that Richard achieved. Some would spot for half an hour or so and then give up. Others would simply look to see where Richard was searching and then try and search in that same direction. But none of them realized the essential difference between themselves and Richard. He was working harder (and at the same time smarter) than anyone else.

I learned a lot from Richard over the course of my trip. He taught me the best way to spot a polar bear (at least one that isn’t sleeping) was to slowly move my binoculars or spotting scope (and I do mean infinitesimally slowly) across the landscape looking for the slightest bit of movement, any movement. On an ice flow, that movement might be an indication of wildlife or it might just be a bergy bit rolling over. In any event, I learned first to watch for movement as the first step in locating a polar bear or a walrus.

Next, Richard taught me to watch for variations in color. Polar bears, despite what you see in most photos, are not pure white. They’re really sort of a yellowish white but when photographers edit and color correct the photos, the bears tend to come out whiter than real life. Richard knew to scan for variations in color at the same time he was looking for movement – all in the white on white icescape.

But most important, Richard’s actions and lessons reinforced something I’d learned long ago and something that even Thomas Jefferson had commented on when he said, “I’m a great believer in luck. It seems the harder I work, the luckier I get.” Richard was making his own luck by working harder than anyone else on the ship. When he was on duty he never quit and I even ran into him transiting from the bridge to the observation deck during his off-duty hours. He was a man driven to succeed.

The successful Certified Legal Nurse Consultants I’ve met aren’t the lucky ones or even the ones that are better at marketing than anyone else. The successful CLNC^® consultants are the ones who work the hardest – day in and day out. They’re the ones constantly searching and looking. If you find yourself commenting on how lucky or more talented some other CLNC^® consultant seems to be, maybe you should ask yourself whether or not you’re willing to put in the hard, smart work necessary to find your own polar bear or just sit back and look at someone else’s CLNC^® success. In the meantime you’ll find me on the bridge searching like crazy for my own polar bears.

Success Is Inside!

Three weeks ago I bought and installed a larger, faster hard (disk) drive for my laptop. The old drive sat safely locked in a desk drawer waiting for disposal until last Friday. That evening I took it home and hammered it to death in the street while one of the neighbor’s kids watched.

Not all legal nurse consultants have the energy or inclination to take their tech support issues out on an innocent hard drive. Other than taking it for a one-way boat ride in your cousin’s sailboat, how do you dispose of an old computer or drive?

We all store so much information on our computers that it can be scary when it’s time to dispose of the old one. Whenever you give (or throw) away a computer, the entire history of that computer and its users goes with it. Bank records, case reports, photographs, passwords and even military secrets are all-too-often still present on a computer that’s been disposed of improperly. Even legal nurse consulting files and folders can be easily recovered by anyone running readily-available software. Files that have been partially overwritten can be recovered and repaired, depending upon the extent of their “destruction.”

What steps do you need to take before disposing of your old computer? Unless you physically destroy the hard drive, (please don’t drop it in the ocean!) it will always be possible to recover some data from it. If you are giving the computer away, whether to a charity, friend or even to a recycling agency, we recommend that at the very minimum you take the following actions:

1. Delete all documents, mail messages and data files.
2. Uninstall any programs, applications or other software that is licensed to you personally.
3. “Sanitize” or “scrub” the remaining empty space on the system’s hard drive.
4. Reinstall the Windows operating system or give the next owner the “system restore” CDs to either reinstall the Windows operating system or to return the computer to its original configuration (if you’re simply disposing of the system there is no need to restore it).

If you do not want to do this yourself, there are independent companies that will dispose of your computer, either for free or for a small fee. Before you trust your old computer to one of these companies, make sure you ask the right questions. Determine how they will ensure that your data has been “scrubbed clean.” Are they scrubbing or degaussing? Ask how or where they actually dispose of the computer. They may be shipping it overseas for sale, they may be “parting it out,” donating to charities or even attempting to recover data themselves as an illegitimate side business. Check to see if they’re registered with the Better Business Bureau. Since you don’t know where it’s going to go, it’s always preferable to “wipe” your computer down to nothing and then “restore” it yourself prior to giving it away.

If you choose to “scrub” your old hard drive yourself there is software available that does a very good job. Not only can it scrub your data, some of these programs can achieve “governmental” levels of data security. These programs work by overwriting the portions of your hard drive containing either nonessential data or the entire hard drive. Depending upon the level of data “destruction” you choose, they may overwrite with a series of ones or zeros in a specific pattern, and will do so over a series of “passes” changing and then repeating the pattern each time. The more passes, the more complete the destruction. This writing and rewriting ensures that computer files previously stored on your hard drive are eventually overwritten with data, even down to the smallest portion of the file, rendering that data impossible to recover.

This software is cheap, relatively easy to use and readily available. One program from a reputable company is cyberCide. The software will help you create a bootable CD which will be placed in the computer’s CD drive while the computer is turned “off.” The computer will then be turned “on” and you’ll follow the on-screen instructions to clean the computer. Don’t expect this to be a fast process. The larger your computer’s hard drive the longer the “scrub” will take.

As a savvy Certified Legal Nurse Consultant, when disposing of any computer you want to be sure that all data has been destroyed prior to disposal. It’ll take longer to remedy any issues that may arise if a bad guy gets your data than it will for you to take the proper steps to destroy it.

Keep on techin’,

Tom

Michelangelo is my favorite sculptor and artist because he was the renegade of his time. Michelangelo knew from his earliest days that he wanted to be a sculptor. He was happiest when he worked with stone and his passion completely transformed his sculpture. He learned to create statues that live and breathe. He was a renegade in his departure from the expected. His works are celebrated to this day and, during my trip to the Louvre, I was lucky to see these two different slaves, one of which he finished sculpting in 1516.

Today is a great day to ask yourself what renegade actions you can take for your legal nurse consulting business to create something unexpected and lasting – something your attorney-clients will remember you for.

Success Is Inside!