attorney

One of our vendors Matthew (the name has been changed to protect the guilty) recently dropped the ball. Because he has a great track record all he really needed to do was acknowledge it and we would have gotten quickly back on track. But instead of owning his mistake, he chose to ignore it, apparently just wishing it would all disappear.

So a week later when we met, he brought a companion – what I call the “elephant in the room.” The elephant in the room is the shame and discomfort that comes with knowing one is wrong, but not having the guts to own it. There we all sat around the table, Matthew, me, a couple of staffers and a very large elephant.

At first, Matthew’s interactions were so strained it was almost laughable. The elephant just kept growing until it seemed to be taking up half the conference room. My staffers were giving him no quarter.

Finally, someone looked at him and said, “Matt, just own it.” At that moment he looked almost relieved and said, “I’m sorry I let everyone down. It won’t happen again.” We all looked at him, said “thanks” and went on with our meeting. The elephant left the building as fast as it arrived because Matthew summoned the courage to finally acknowledge that it was there.

In your CLNC^® business, have you ever brought an elephant into a meeting with an attorney-client? You may have dropped the ball and, like Matthew, need to own up to it but can’t seem to summon the courage to do so. Even if the attorney doesn’t mention it, the elephant won’t go away on its own, and the pain it causes you will be much greater than the pain of acknowledging you made a mistake. Plus, every second that the elephant is in the room without acknowledgment is a strain on your professional relationship.

I could write a book on just the mistakes I’ve made. The person who makes no mistakes usually makes nothing at all. I can pretty much guarantee that at some point in your career as a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant you’ll walk into a meeting with an attorney-client followed by a large, relentless elephant. You’ll have a choice: fess up or let the elephant take up all the space. You decide!

Success Is Inside (but the elephant shouldn’t be)!

Thanks to all the CLNC® consultants who attended the 2011 National Alliance of Certified Legal Nurse Consultants Conference Cruise. I so loved hearing how much you learned from our speakers and seeing you networking with fellow CLNC® pirates. It was a blast partying with you and spending a week together. I loved hearing your CLNC® Success Stories and am so energized by them.

Here are a few tips to keep you going on the path to your goals:

1. Reconnect with your attorney-clients by sending a note to let them know you’ve attended the NACLNC^® Conference for additional education and to renew your CLNC^® Certification. Remind them that this is your way to better serve them and their clients.
2. Send a news release to your community newspaper announcing your completion of this advanced Certified Legal Nurse Consultant training and renewal of your CLNC^® Certification.
3. Continue your success: mark your calendar and sign up now for the
   2013 NACLNC^® Conference where you can join us for a 7-Day Weekend March 2-9, 2013 sailing the Western Caribbean.

Enjoy the NACLNC^® Conference photo gallery and the video of the CLNC^® cheerleading contest (each group had five minutes to create, choreograph and practice their cheer).

Thanks for helping to make the NACLNC^® Conference the amazing event that it was. I’ll see you in 2013 aboard the Oasis of the Seas for the next NACLNC^® Conference. Can’t wait to cruise the rest of the Caribbean with you.

Success Is Inside!

“Finish it out” is the mantra of my trainer, Jerome. It doesn’t matter what exercise I’m doing, he’s always pushing me “Finish it out Vickie, finish it out.” If I’m doing a lat pull-down or a one-arm row, he doesn’t want me stopping short. Every exercise has a full range of motion and it’s easy to quit before contracting those muscles to their full potential. For example, if you’re doing one-arm chin-ups it’s easy to quit before your chin reaches the bar, and that’s exactly when I’ll hear Jerome chanting, “Finish it out Vickie, finish it out.” Okay, I really don’t do one-arm chin-ups (yet), but you get the idea, right?

When you’re writing a report or providing any of the other 32 CLNC^® services to your attorney-clients, ask yourself, “Have I finished it out?” I’ve critiqued more legal nurse consulting reports than I can keep track of and often my response is just like Jerome’s, “Nice start, but now it’s time to finish it out.” Always assess whether you identified and engaged your analysis as deeply as is required to win the case.

Keep an ear cocked for Jerome and me as we’re reminding you to “finish it out”.

Success Is Inside!

Vickie and I are back from the NACLNC^® Conference Cruise and, if you followed her blogs last week, you know we had a rocking time on the high seas! Our next Conference Cruise is guaranteed to be even more fun. That being said, here’s another quickie Tech Tip because I’m still trying to unpack and deal with all the detritus of CLNC^® life that builds up in your inbox while you’re out of the office on a cruise having fun with hundreds of CLNC^® consultants.

Many CLNC^® consultants use Microsoft^® Outlook^® as their legal nurse consulting business’s email client. It’s a powerful organizational tool. Here’s an Outlook tip for you. Let’s say you are in the midst of reading an email from one of your attorney-clients and you decide to you need to set a reminder, calendar appointment or new task to follow-up on the topic of the email. There’s an easier way: Simply drag and drop that email directly onto the calendar date. This will immediately create a new appointment with the information from the email in the body of the appointment and the subject of the email in the subject line of the appointment. All you need to do is set the time!

This is a wonderful way to master your inbox and I have to make a confession: I learned this trick from Vickie who is a master of the Outlook Calendar. Use this tip to master your own Certified Legal Nurse Consulting destiny, or at least your calendar.

Keep on Techin’,

Tom

I seriously could write a book about this case. I met the attorney of this memorable case at a legal seminar. I was asked to review the medical records and fetal monitoring strips of a baby who was severely brain injured. An OB/GYN expert reviewed the records and found no deviations to the standard of care by the physician or the labor nurses. It was the OB/GYN’s opinion that the fetal monitoring strips showed no distress.

The attorney, a very accomplished medical malpractice attorney, was then led to believe that the cause of the baby’s injuries was a negligent resuscitation after delivery, with a “0” Apgar score as “proof.”

The attorney hired me to review the records with a focus on resuscitation. After reviewing the records, my opinion was that there were significant hyperstimulation and hypertonus causing a brain compression injury to the baby during labor. I developed a 50-page chronology that detailed every aspect of the labor and delivery, complete with a section that compared and contrasted the documented interpretation of the FMS to mine. I addressed the standard of care for nurses and physicians for staffing guidelines, Pitocin^®, intrauterine pressure catheters and amnioinfusion. The hospital had gone against its own protocols in the use of Pitocin^® and amnioinfusion. Because the heart beat of the baby showed no “sentinel event” and did not look “ominous,” the original OB/GYN who reviewed the case missed the six hours of hyperstimulus and hypertonus of 50 mmHg. The nurses continued the amnioinfusion and increased the Pitocin^® despite the ominous contraction pattern which are both deviations from the SOC and against hospital policy.

The attorney reviewed my interpretation of the case and when we met again, she greeted me with “Okay, I get it! I’m filing this case”, and that was the beginning of one of the best cases of her career. It became as satisfying for her as it was for me.

I was able to secure top medical experts – one of whom she had contacted before on another case but who said he was too busy. When I contacted him he said, “As long as you’ve determined it’s a viable case, I’ll review it”. This wasn’t the first time an expert had agreed to take on a case for me when they had said no to the attorney.

In addition to providing the chronology, educating the attorney and finding several expert witnesses, I flew to Houston to meet the attorney in a labor suite and operating room to teach about all of the equipment used on the mother i.e., IUPC, fetal monitor, IVs, cardiac monitor, pulse oximeter, O2, etc., during labor and delivery and the resuscitation of the newborn.

The defense had their usual arguments explaining why the injuries couldn’t have happened during labor – infection causation, prenatal causation, no sentinel event. The defense also tried a Motion in Limine to prevent the theory of hyperstimulus and hypertonus causing a compression brain injury during labor. All to no avail.

Because of the detailed chronology and up-front, early and thorough education provided to the attorney, the case actually settled prior to any disclosure of expert reports or expert depositions – which is unheard of in brain-injured baby cases.

The impact on my financial status is immeasurable and this attorney-client has referred me to other attorneys. I would not make any changes to the way I prepared this case. My advice to other Certified Legal Nurse Consultants is to follow your instincts about what you think will help your attorney-clients the most.

My mission statement as a CLNC^® consultant is to make medicine safer for all. This baby, while injured, will have his life care plan fully funded and will have the most satisfying life possible because of my involvement. My attorney-client continually expresses her gratitude saying: “We never would have gotten here without you. It was because of you that we won this case.”

Becky Mungai, RN, BA, CLNC

I was asked to be the speaker at the February meeting for the Massachusetts Academy of Trial Attorneys. I arrived early to get prepared. Several people were late due to the weather. Only 10 attorneys braved the cold, rainy, snowy night to attend.

I began my presentation with information about legal nurse consulting, the CLNC^® services I provide and my nursing expertise. After my presentation, they all took my contact information and brochure. Then, they spent a lot of time talking about their cases.

The next day I got a call from one of the attorneys who had attended. He was looking for a wound care specialist. The day after that I got a call from another attorney for a case review. The phone has not stopped ringing since that night and the referrals from these attorneys have also been great.

What I want Certified Legal Nurse Consultants to know is that no matter how small the crowd, it will pay off!

Guest Blogger Profile:

Mildred Mannion, RN, BSN, CNOR, CLNC is the owner of M3 Legal Nurse Consulting, Inc. in Massachusetts. She has 22 years of nursing experience and currently works in the operating room of a large teaching hospital.

Certified Legal Nurse Consultant David Kuntz

During my career as an ICU nurse, I was always looking for ways to better myself. I took and passed the CCRN exam, but to my dismay I received no recognition from the hospital administrators for this accomplishment. I tried management and found that I was working more hours and getting paid less than the nurses on my unit. Then something happened that changed my career. I tore a ligament in my hand while restraining a patient. I could no longer lift anything over 25 pounds. I was devastated. My ICU nursing career was over. I spent one and half years on light duty and was told that I had to find a different job or the hospital would settle with me. After months of searching, I landed a job in IT as a clinical analyst.

At home after my surgery I had time on my hands, or in my case – hand, so I started to search for different ways to use my nursing knowledge. I came across legal nurse consulting on one of my searches. I spent hours researching legal nurse consulting. The spark was lit and grew with every bad day I had.

It took me five years until I finally decided to just go for it. I enrolled in the CLNC^® Certification Program in July 2009 and immediately started the home-study course. I finished it in a week and was certified the following weekend. I then worked on the NACLNC^® Apprenticeship Program. It took me a little over a week to finish and at that point, I started getting my promotional materials, sample work products and letters refined and ready to send to attorneys.

I started sending out material toward the end of August using all of the techniques I learned from Vickie. One goal that was foremost in my mind was to have a case before I attended the CLNC^® 6-Day Certification Program in October.

I was nervous before I made my first phone call to an attorney, but I kept remembering that they are people just like everyone else and that really calmed me down. In that first call, I introduced myself and gave a brief synopsis of the material I had already sent. I asked for an appointment and the attorney said, “Sure, come in at 4:00pm.”

Now I was really nervous. I looked over the sample interview questions in the online NACLNC^® Community and realized that I knew this information. I met with the attorney and the interview went so well, he is sending me a medical-malpractice case.

Two weeks later, I called another attorney to follow-up on my promotional material. He told me he didn’t receive it, so I presented a short version of how I could assist him. He asked me to set up a meeting with his secretary. The next day I went to his office and he walked into the conference room with a case in his hands and a check for $1,500.00. Inside I was doing cartwheels yet I remained composed until I got in my car and was heading home. The following day I talked with a different attorney and he wants to use me on two cases.

From the end of August to the first week in October, I was able to obtain three attorney-clients.

My first goal was met. I followed what Vickie taught and used her techniques. If everyone follows what they learn in the CLNC^® Certification Program, they will be successful in this business. Vickie and Vickie Milazzo Institute have already done the hard work; all a student has to do is apply what they learn from the CNLC^® Certification Program.

Guest Blogger Profile

David Kuntz, RN, BSN, CLNC has 17 years of nursing experience. He is the owner of David Kuntz and Associates in western New Mexico and specializes in medical malpractice.

I’ve told you about the bamboo that highlights my morning tea time. Lately there’s been a pair of northern cardinals living in the bougainvillea growing outside my living room windows. They’re a matched set, a male and female, and whenever they appear, they bring a joyful mindfulness to my day, reminding me that life is good. I used to think they mate for life (like me) but found out that it’s more likely just for one season. I also learned that during the wooing process the male will not only sing to the female, but he’ll bring her seeds and feed them to her beak-to-beak. I’m still waiting to see that action (and I don’t mean from Tom).

Blogging about the bamboo and the cardinals reminds me of another practice I’d like to share with my Certified Legal Nurse Consulting colleagues. That’s the practice of mindfulness. Mindfulness, in its simplest form, is simply being fully in the present and taking in things as they are. It is also being fully aware of our body’s sensations, such as our breathing. It can be fully embracing the joy I feel watching the cardinals hop from branch to branch. When you’re walking, it can be feeling the satisfaction of using your muscles, noticing and appreciating the beauty of the budding trees or smelling the hamburgers from the local cafe.

I’ve found that it is easier to be mindful when I’m doing nonwork-related activities such as hiking in the woods. When I’m working, I need to be intentional about mindfulness and not let my mind start flying in a thousand different directions about what has to get done by whom. I need to be mindful about eliminating the clutter that distracts me from my big vision. I have a friend who defines multitasking as worrying about many things at the same time. Worry is a completely useless emotion and that’s why mindfulness is so relevant to everything we do. Mindfulness gives us the focus we need to complete even the most challenging projects.

What about you? When you’re working in your legal nurse consulting business on a report for an attorney-client, are you thinking about the time-crunch, how much you don’t like typing or are you wishing your children would quit interrupting your work? Are you wondering how you can find a CLNC^® subcontractor with a particular specialty or where you’ll locate an expert witness for a case. Is your mind flying everywhere but on your work? Be honest, it happens to all of us.

It’s been said that any activity that is done mindfully is a form of meditation. In other words, if you fully release yourself into the work, feeling the mouse in your hand, listening to the clacking of the keys on your keyboard, marveling at the science that brings the Internet into your home and the computer technology that allows you to share your knowledge with the attorney-client, you turn a chore into a mindful activity. Even pausing to appreciate the interplay of the sun in the branches of the trees outside your window or the sound of your house as it heats in the day can be an exercise in mindfulness.

Apply mindfulness to anything you consider a chore and turn it from a chore into a meditation – dialing the phone and being fully present in the conversation, enjoying the smell and warmth of the clothes as you fold them from the dryer or just feeling the texture of the crisp pages of the research study you’re reading. I’m trying to be mindful as I type this. I’ve closed my email program and am engaging my fingers on the keyboard, listening to my own mind and blocking out the ringing phones in the office.

But, don’t force mindfulness, it needs to become a natural act. Muho Noelke has pointed out “…we have to forget things like I should be mindful of this or that. If you are mindful, you are already creating a separation (I – am – mindful – of – ….). Don’t be mindful, please! When you walk, just walk. Let the walk walk. Let the talk talk. Let the eating eat, the sitting sit, the work work. Let sleep sleep.”

That’s the first step on the path to true mindfulness. Don’t “be” mindful, “become” mindful.

Success Is Inside!

What are you waiting for before you start your career and business as a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant? In this video, Doris Huegel, RN, CLNC shares that after attending the CLNC^® 6-Day Certification Program, she didn’t even wait to unpack her bags before marketing herself to an attorney-prospect near her hometown in rural Pennsylvania. Her enthusiasm and initiative secured that first case for her. Congratulations Doris for going for it.

Success Is Inside!

As a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant, I have had a number of wonderful experiences. These are the three memorable ones I want to share with CLNC^® consultants everywhere. After reading this, I hope you’ll agree that we do make a difference.

The first case involved an autistic 19-year-old boy. He was put on a new medication, not monitored properly and ended up being self-abusive to the point of severely injuring himself. He tore his face apart and became septic. His parents were frantic. I was able to pinpoint the issues for the attorney. Before I reviewed the case and made my recommendation, the physician had refused to change this young man’s medication. I was instrumental in getting him the appropriate help so that his behavior returned to baseline. His parents and the attorney were so grateful. The attorney continues to consult with me, and also frequently refers me to other attorneys. This case gave me one of my first opportunities to say, “Ah ha! I see what legal nurse consulting is all about.”

The next experience was with an attorney I have worked with for years. He only does cases involving dog bites. However, in one case, I found that it was not just a personal injury case, I discovered malpractice. The case suddenly got much more intense and the depth of requested information increased. My information provided my attorney-client with a finished product he will never forget. The case grew to voluminous proportions once I uncovered the malpractice. My attorney-client tells everyone how pleased he was with my CLNC^® work product, and how fortunate he feels to have a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant help with his cases. He says this case proved why he cannot do any of his medical-related cases without me.

My third memorable experience is not a case but how wonderful I feel when I meet CLNC^® students. I have such a positive sense of satisfaction when they tell me that the opportunity to speak to a full-time practicing Certified Legal Nurse Consultant helped them make the decision to go forward with becoming a CLNC^® consultant. I feel I am a part of an exciting new start for a fellow nurse, looking for a new way to use his/her nursing knowledge. I know for them, like me, that going through Vickie’s Certified Legal Nurse Consulting program will be a life-changing decision, and knowing I’ve made a positive difference in their lives makes me feel very excited and happy.

I love making a difference as a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant.

Dale Barnes, RN, MSN, PHN, CLNC