VICKIE: This is Janice Sumner, Certified Legal Nurse Consultant. Janice, I’ve asked you to speak with me today because I know that you use your CLNC certification a little differently than the CLNC consultants who consult directly with attorneys and law firms. Tell us about what you do.
JANICE: I work for a company, we have over 3,000 patients. It’s a long term care company. Having my certification behind my credentials means a lot to that company because I work a lot with risk management.
VICKIE: And obviously, if you’re reviewing a case from a risk management perspective, a lot of that analysis is very similar to what we do when we’re helping attorneys litigate cases.
JANICE: That’s right. It’s exactly the same because if we have something happen, whether it’s a fall or fracture, then I’m able to go through the chart at that point and help direct the documentation. I can actually help to teach so that we can further prevent those.
VICKIE: You’re basically using it more with the objective of preventing lawsuits. Also, using it to manage those risks and helping them, if indeed, there really is an incident.
JANICE: That’s exactly right except we do get sued. If you don’t believe that in long term care, just watch the television every day. Because we have the background knowledge of the incident before it happened, once we get sued it makes it much easier to go through the chart and point out to our attorney what we did proactively to try to prevent that.
VICKIE: And you can help to give them some defense ideas as well along the way.
JANICE: That’s exactly right because I’ve known what happened, when it happened and also I help to prep our staff for interviews and depositions.
VICKIE: If somebody wanted to use their CLNC certification to get involved from a risk management perspective what would you say to them?
JANICE: You should market yourself as a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant because, as I said, they like you to have those credentials behind your name. That makes you much more equipped to handle that.
VICKIE: Thank you so much Janice.
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P.S. Comment and share non-traditional ways you use your CLNC certification.