Imagine this scenario:
You’re an attorney and a case comes to your firm. Let’s say it’s a situation where the parents and grandparents of an infant are accusing the doctor of prescribing an overdose of medication. Or, let’s take the other side of this and say it’s the doctor coming to you and insisting on his innocence. He says the parents of the infant failed to follow clear instructions regarding the prescribed medication.
You decide to take the case (either for the parents or the doctor). In order to make your case, you receive medical evidence: charts, written orders, procedures, prescriptions – you name it. You see medical terms you’re unfamiliar with and read about drugs you’ve never heard of.
First, you grab your antacid because you know this is going to be a gut wrencher. Next you rub your temples and get your extra-strength pain pills because you can feel a headache coming on-one of several. Then you call your spouse and let her know you’re going to be at the office late (again). Several hours later you make another call…to the Chinese restaurant for some late-night takeout.
As you look at the pile of medical information and wonder how you’ll make sense of it all, let alone turn it into a winning case, you ask yourself: “Isn’t there a simpler way?”
The answer to that is: “Yes!”
You can avoid the headaches, antacids, and even many of the late nights by making one call to a unique specialist, someone who makes their living poring over medical evidence and making sense of it all. You can make a call to a Legal Nurse Consultant (LNC).
What is a legal nurse consultant, and how can they help you as an attorney?
Legal nurse consultants are registered nurses that bring a broad scope of medical experience to your litigation team and provide you with the tools you need tomake your case more winnable. One of the things that a legal nurse consultant can do is organize and analyze medical records. Most attorneys agree that this service alone is a huge time-saver. So imagine that scenario above once more: You get the case, but instead of reaching for the antacids and the aspirin, you call in your legal nurse consultant. With that one call you’ve lifted a huge burden off your shoulders and you’ve added a winning component to your litigation team. (You can still have your Chinese food, but now you can have it with your significant other, not George the bald-headed guy from custodial.)
Legal nurse consultants can take your medical evidence and turn it into something usable and understandable. We can take reports and put them into a narrative that you can use to connect to a jury. Or, we can take them and put them into a timeline or chronological format that you can use to demonstrate to a jury the medical events that occurred in a logical,simple-to-understand sequence.
Because of the medical expertise a legal nurse consultant brings to the table, we frequently uncover issues and facts that are easily overlooked by non-medical persons. Additionally, LNC’s have the advantage of insight into the working of hospitals, clinics, and other medical facilities. Many times, winning or losing a case is often just as dependent on your understanding medical politics as it is on understanding medical facts.
In short, a legal nurse consultant can provide you with atime-saving, cost-effective advantage in the litigation process that can give you the critical edge you need to win your medical-related cases.