When I became a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant in 2007, it was one of the first career moves that I researched before I took the plunge into the wild world of legal nurse consulting.
Like any other Certified Legal Nurse Consultant, whether you’re working at home with family around you, in an office with other CLNC® consultants and attorneys around or camped out in a Starbucks with your laptop, I can guarantee you’ll be interrupted.
My day starts at 5:30am because I know I will have at least two hours of silence without phones, emails or distractions from dogs and the rest of the world. Very strong coffee is a given. First I go through overnight emails and flag them for review or respond right away, but I never send emails until after 8:30am. If someone gets my email at 6:00am, they know I’m up working and will take that as game on. I always review my schedule to make sure I didn’t double-book or have new items that need immediate attention.
A genius for all times, Albert Einstein once said, “You can’t solve a problem with the same mind that created it.” When I first read this, I contemplated its meaning and thought: It is only a problem if I allow myself to view it as such. Applying Einstein’s statement in a practical way to my everyday CLNC® business, I thought: to solve a problem I’ve obviously helped to create, I need to start with a new and fresh MIND.
Even the best Certified Legal Nurse Consultants make mistakes and these veteran CLNC® consultants are proof that none of us are exempt. Follow their advice on how to avoid the most common mistakes in your legal nurse consulting business and you will enjoy the journey and more CLNC success.
Talk to any successful Certified Legal Nurse Consultant and they will admit that you’re not the only RN who has fears about starting a CLNC® business. In this blog four CLNC consultants discuss their fears and how they overcame them.
Nurses naturally have the strength of agility. After all, you can’t be a nurse and not be agile. When you have five people talking to you at once, and you’re handling five different emergencies at once, that takes agility. When you go from this to that, without time to think and seconds are making a difference – that’s agility. When you’re floated to a unit you know nothing about – and you don’t kill anyone – that’s agility. As nurses, we’re all over that strength, aren’t we?
Yesterday I relocated a cherished photograph that I had purchased in Vietnam. Taking in the serenity of the salt flats in Long Thanh’s Harvest’s Day photo brought me back to a less serene experience I had while stuck on a curb in Saigon (I know it’s Ho Chi Minh City, but nobody calls it that). My objective, a restaurant where my husband and my lunch awaited me, stood on the opposite side of the street. I could see the food, smell it and, if you know me, you know I had built up quite an appetite.
I’m often in awe of, and humbled by, the nursing knowledge and expertise of the RNs who come through the CLNC® Certification Program. I joke with Tom that if I ever have a medical crisis, I hope it’s in a room full of Certified Legal Nurse Consultants. Now that you’ve become a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant, it’s a good idea to let the world know that you’ve mastered a complex body of specialized knowledge beyond your nursing degree.
I had no idea the industry of legal nurse consulting existed, yet I was interested in the legal world even before I became a nurse. One day eight years into my career, I was talking to a coworker. “I love nursing,” I told her, “but the legal aspects of what we do intrigues me too. I wish I could find a way to do both.”
*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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