Lorraine Perrit, RN, MSN, OCN, CLNC shares how she became involved as a CLNC^® consultant in class action litigation against the tobacco industry through her involvement on a case with an attorney. These tobacco cases are now taking up most of her time as a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant.  Take a moment to view Lorraine’s CLNC^® Success Story and the benefits she has since enjoyed!

Congratulations Lorraine!

Success Is Inside!

One of the first things all Certified Legal Nurse Consultants learn in the CLNC^® Certification Program is the 30 CLNC^® services you can and do provide to your attorney-clients. In today’s video blog, one of our CLNC^® Mentors shares a brand new CLNC^® service she is providing to attorneys. Watch this video to add one more service to your own CLNC^® business.

Success Is Inside!

I talk to thousands of RNs every year who are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the healthcare system. Many of these conversations remind me of a dinner I had with my father at an Italian restaurant. After an animated discussion with the waiter, my dad ordered a pasta dish that wasn’t on the menu, telling the waiter exactly what he wanted in it.

When the food came, it was presented beautifully and prepared exactly as he had requested. Bits of scallion, garlic and peppered chicken glistened over a serving of fettuccine, all mixed with basil and olive oil, topped with chunks of ripe, red tomato lightly dusted with Parmesan cheese. The dish looked so good, I wanted it instead of my own.

I expected my father to be delighted with his meal. Instead, he started comparing it to a completely different pasta dish from a different Italian restaurant. Rather than enjoying his dinner, he found fault with the waiter, the restaurant and the chef for not serving this other recipe. According to dad, the dish was prepared wrong and even had the wrong ingredients! He specifically complained that there shouldn’t have been any tomatoes and there wasn’t enough garlic.

I sat there both stunned and amused. Even though my dad’s pasta was prepared exactly as he had requested, it wasn’t what he really wanted because it wasn’t the dish he was used to ordering at the other restaurant. Finally, I gently interrupted his litany of complaints, reminding him that he had received exactly what he ordered. In fact, after tasting it, I liked it even better than the dish he was comparing it to.

Dad replied, “I may have gotten what I ordered, but it isn’t what I want.” My father had expected the waiter to read his mind and bring him something other than what he ordered. Eventually, my dad’s hunger got the best of him and he enjoyed his meal to the last bite. After all, when you’re hungry, even the wrong dish fills your stomach.

What Career Menu Are You Ordering From?

As an RN, are you hungry for job satisfaction but ordering the wrong dish off the wrong menu?

• Do you feel exhausted by your working conditions and environment?
• Do you dislike the hours, the weekends, the administration, the HMOs?
• Are you cranky about too many patients and not enough time to provide the quality of care you know you’re capable of?

If your nursing career isn’t where you want it to be, are you confusing your expectations and desires with what a traditional nursing job menu offers? Are you trying to order a dish that isn’t on the menu?

Like my dad, you may have expectations about what you are being served. You may have tried your best to order exactly what you wanted. Yet what’s on your plate has turned out very differently from what you were expecting.

If you stay at your same RN job and order off the same old RN job menu, don’t be surprised when you get what you’ve always gotten even though it’s not what you want. Much like the Salisbury steak in a hospital cafeteria, what healthcare facilities serve up for your nursing career has been on the menu for years. Sometimes the description changes, sometimes the preparation changes, but it’s still the same old Salisbury steak, and it is still not very satisfying for many RNs I’ve come to know.

Feast at a Brand New Restaurant

If you’re salivating for a nursing dish with different ingredients, if you want more autonomy, freedom, control or money, it’s time to feast at a new restaurant with a new and modern menu.

Certified Legal Nurse Consultants don’t order off the traditional menu offered by healthcare facilities. They’ve found a new menu that features more of what they want for themselves and they’re willing to leave their hospital restaurant to enjoy that innovative menu. For these nurses, the legal nurse consulting restaurant has the right menu – dishes that satisfy their palate in every way, and choices so plentiful they don’t have to look anywhere else because any dish they can imagine is already on the CLNC^® menu.

Life is meant to be an adventurous banquet filled with tasty and satisfying dining experiences. It’s your meal – you get to choose the restaurant and write your own menu. Shouldn’t you get what you want, what you deserve, like so many other nurses who have chosen to stop ordering off the wrong menu?

Your right menu is just an action step away. Go to the right nursing restaurant today and you’ll find that one dish you’ve been craving. I invite you to join me and my CLNC^® colleagues at the legal nurse consulting banquet – the taste sensation of a lifetime. Don’t miss another minute of this exciting feast – reserve your place at the CLNC^® banquet table today.

Success Is Inside!

We all know there’s no one magic formula for prosperity and happiness, but there’s one common denominator I’ve found among successful nurses: they have a passionate drive to do what they do. They are on fire. Some inner spark in the mind, spirit and soul burns intensely, driving them over seemingly insurmountable barriers. Kind of like the passion we feel for a newborn baby. I just got back from my great niece’s christening in San Diego.

I was there the night she was born (March 29, 2009) and it was love at first sight. There’s nothing like the love we feel for a new baby, but wouldn’t it be nice if the love you feel for your work could be almost as strong as the love you feel for a baby?

Ask yourself if you’re passionate about the work you do as an RN. If the answer is no, it’s nothing more than a nursing job. Don’t say you go to work every day because of the family and bills. We’ve all got those. While we can’t all quit our jobs and just play in our garden or hold precious babies all day, we can set up our lives to enjoy our work. Just because we have to make a living doesn’t mean that we have to feel like we’re not living to make it.

When I started my legal nurse consulting business in 1982, I felt like I was birthing a baby. I had to work overtime at the hospital to pay my mortgage. Because my passion for starting my business was so strong, I was willing to give up TV, a social life and every spare minute I had to go for what I wanted. Was it easy? No. Was it worth it? YES! What do women say they remember most from the deliveries – the pain, or the unconditional love they felt? That’s how I remember my business start-up days. I was in love with the business I was creating, launching and growing.

Because I am passionate about my business and the work that goes with it, I am not really working at all. Does that sound strange or counter-intuitive? It shouldn’t. If you love what you do, it doesn’t feel like work. If you do what you love, you’ll never work another day in your life. Will you go to a job? Sure, probably five days a week. Will some days be harder than others? Sure. When Debra from our accounting department is distributing the paychecks, Tom will sometimes be heard to shout, “This is great! I can’t believe I get paid to work here! Woo-hoo!”

Do you have a “Woo-Hoo!” moment when you get your paycheck or do you have a “Ho-Humm” sigh? Without the fire that only passion arouses, success eludes us. If you’re not passionate about an idea, you won’t do what it takes to carry it out, because pursuing that idea would be way too hard without passion. Would a mom be able to go sleep deprived for years and do all that she does to care for her child without love?

To live passionately is to act. If you’re true to yourself, you’ll put energy behind your passions and take the necessary actions to bring them to fulfillment.

Passions are lived out in as many expressions as there are people. Yours are inside you, and they will reveal themselves with ease if you listen carefully. Take some time today and listen for your passion. It might surprise you and you may end up never working a day for the rest of your life.

Passionately yours,

Success Is Inside!

It’s hard to believe that in my lifetime I’d ever see layoffs in the nursing field. Like many of you, I remember the good times when there were billboards around my city advertising signing bonuses for nurses at local hospitals. That’s all changing. Two recent articles in the Wall Street Journal (1) (2) and one in the Washington Post are focusing on the fact that, while there is still a nursing shortage, there is now a shortage of nursing jobs. That sounds like a contradiction in terms but it’s not.

In a March 2009 report, the AHA revealed that 53% of the hospitals surveyed were operating at a negative margin or in plain English, they’re losing money. Hospitals in some areas of the country are reducing hospital staff. Just a year ago hospitals that were taking just about any skilled nurse who walked through the door are now finding it easier to be selective in their hiring. In short, this ain’t your mother’s nursing profession anymore.

If the news from nursing wasn’t already bad enough, there’s a news story about Dean Health System which announced its intention to “immediately” lay off 90 employees. This included a nurse who was assisting in a surgical procedure and was called out of surgery to be told she was laid off! Okay, I can understand cost cutting, but don’t you think it’s a little extreme to lay someone off in the middle of a procedure? Has the world just gone crazy? What if they’d laid off the anesthesiologist? Or the surgeon? I shudder to think of the consequences (Dr. Smith, please report to HR, stat!).

The good thing about legal nurse consulting is that medical malpractice and personal injury litigation is recession proof. Now that we’re seeing financial stress on hospitals and doctors, I believe we’re going to start seeing more and more medical and nursing malpractice as well as the delivery of substandard healthcare.

A recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine, showed that a fifth of Medicare patients were rehospitalized within 30 days of their initial discharge! When the pressure is on to cut healthcare costs by reducing care, testing and length of stay; as nursing shifts come under more pressure with fewer nurses covering more patients; and as healthcare continues to devolve into what I call the “Dark Ages of Medicine;” you can be sure that Certified Legal Nurse Consultants will be on the front lines working with attorneys to redress the wrongs that are certain to happen.

One of the things I like best about being a self-employed entrepreneur is that the only person who can lay me off – is me (and that isn’t happening any time soon)!

Stay busy!

Success Is Inside!