How often in your legal nurse consulting business have you had a client, either a medical malpractice or personal injury attorney, who needed the report yesterday? If you’re like me, one time is one time too many. In the legal nurse consulting business a “yesterday” deadline is no fun for you, and it’s not good for the attorney either.
For years I’ve shared my morning tea time ritual with you and I can attest those calming minutes spent taking care of me have helped in many tough situations. As a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant you’re guaranteed to experience moments when you don’t know the answer or an attorney catches you in a mistake.
This year the CLNC Mentors and I have spent a lot of time exhibiting with Certified Legal Nurse Consultants at legal conferences throughout the U.S. You could say we’ve talked to a lot of attorneys.
Think of the one place lawyers are guaranteed to hang out – the courthouse. Schedule a trip to your civil courthouse and spend a few minutes or a few hours. It’s free.
At the Philadelphia CLNC Certification Seminar this week I counseled a CLNC student who had been unjustly terminated from her RN job at the hospital. She had a 25-year record that was flawless. Without getting into the details, I’ve heard similar stories over the years from other RNs who have been unjustly terminated for being whistleblowers (e.g., reporting an impaired or incompetent MD to administration).
Social media accounts such as Facebook®, Twitter®, Instagram® and their like present a wealth of potentially damaging information for both plaintiff and defense. Many people leave those accounts open to public viewing, indexing and searching. It’s common and considered standard practice for attorneys to review the public and private social media accounts of their own client and the public social media accounts of the opposing parties, expert witnesses and even jurors for potentially useful or damaging information. Attorneys research those social media accounts before, during and after litigation.
Many account owners set the privacy settings to allow only “friends” or approved parties to view their posts. If an attorney requests you, as a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant, to “friend” or infiltrate an opposing party’s or juror’s private account, don’t do it. Attorneys are themselves ethically prohibited from doing so and ethically prevented from instructing someone else to do the same. The attorney should always obtain the information through the proper discovery process.
I recently observed a plaintiff attorney cross-examining the defense medical expert in a medical malpractice trial. The plaintiff attorney obviously had not used a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant because most CLNC consultants would have advised him that the case was not meritorious.
It’s okay to disagree with another person. In fact, at LegalNurse.com I encourage it. Breakthroughs rarely come from consensus. The trick to successfully disagreeing is disagreeing without being disagreeable. Persuasion is an art form that requires diplomacy and being agreeable about the disagreement. The more agreeable and diplomatic you are when trying to persuade others to your side, the more likely they will genuinely listen to your point of view. You won’t be able to hypnotize an attorney-client to your way of thinking about a medical-related issue, so you need to find a more practical and persuasive strategy.
Independent medical examinations (IMEs) of an injured plaintiff in a medical malpractice or personal injury case are not truly independent because they are demanded by the insurance company. And since it’s the insurance company who is paying for the examining physician, it’s arguable that a defense bias pervades the whole exam – especially if the MD has a continuing relationship with that insurer (i.e., lots and lots of IMEs).
Unless you’re in the ICU, the medical world moves slowly. If you’ve ever accompanied a friend to the emergency department (ED), and sat for hours, you know what I’m talking about. Doctors’ offices are much the same way. The closest they come to an on-time appointment is moving you out of the lobby/waiting room and into an examination/waiting room (to decrease the appearance of stacked up patients).
*The opinions and statements made by Vickie Milazzo, the founder of Medical-Legal Consulting Institute, Inc. are based on her experiences and expertise, should not be applied beyond the specific context provided, and do not guaranty or project actual results. Vickie Milazzo is no longer involved in the operations or management of the business, but is involved as an independent education consultant.
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