Would you like to expand your career horizons? Add more skills to your professional tool kit? Then consider taking your nursing skills into the legal arena.
“Becoming an expert witness or a legal nurse consultant is a way for nurses who are interested in legal issues to use their clinical skills in a different way,” said Elizabeth G. Rudolph, JD, MSN, RN, founder of Jurex Center for Legal Nurse Consulting in Memphis. “Nurses could add an additional high-paying revenue stream to their practice, or start their own legal-consulting businesses.”
A nurse and an attorney with more than 20 years of experience practicing health care law, Rudolph founded Jurex in 2006.
“There are thousands of medically related lawsuits every year, and I saw a need for more qualified nurses who could assist lawyers in those cases,” Rudolph said. “I wanted to give nurses more choices and empower them with the tools to exercise those choices.”
Jurex aims to provide high-quality, flexible and affordable training for nurses to use their clinical skills to help lawyers and others who want their services.
On April 24-25, Rudolph will bring her two-day course — How to Be a Professional Legal Nurse Consultant — to Atlanta. The tuition ($799) includes a legal primer, case studies, marketing ideas, the PLNC certification test and a year’s listing on the national Jurex directory. The course is approved for 15 contact hours through the American Nurses Credentialing Center.
For information about the course, which is also offered in online, video and audio formats, go to www.jurexnurse.com.
Online training can also be found through the nonprofit American Association of Legal Nurse Consultants (AALNC). The organization’s free online booklet, “Getting Started in Legal Nurse Consulting,” is a good place to start. For information, go to www.aalnc.org.
While formal training is helpful, it’s not required for practice, according to the AALNC. Many legal nurse consultants, including Debra Meadows of King & Spalding law firm in Atlanta, learned their skills on the job.
“I thought I’d be at the bedside for 30 years when I went into nursing, but I discovered I liked doing things outside the norm and off the beaten path,” said Meadows, RN, BSN, MSN.
Meadows worked at the bedside at Emory University Hospital for seven years in clinical practice. She later became a nurse recruiter and then an HR manager for Emory Health System.
After 16 years with Emory, Meadows worked in corporate human relations for several years, until a friend told her about a legal nurse consulting position at King & Spalding. Meadows, one of seven nurses at the law firm, has worked there for seven years.
“My office is filled with medical records files,” she said. “On a daily basis, I review, analyze and write summary reports about those records so that the attorney can get a feel for the case.
“I work on teams to form a strategy for the case. As a nurse, I can look at records that are totally illegible to others and see things that they don’t.”
King & Spalding was willing to train Meadows on the legal aspects of the job, and it helped that she came aboard with a varied clinical background. Meadows had worked as a float nurse and in the intensive care unit.
“You can’t pick the cases you’ll be working on, so it helps to have an understanding of different kinds of practice,” she said. “It also helps to be curious and be interested in learning the law.
“You have to be very good at research and willing to dig deep for answers. And you have to be very detail-oriented. Giving incorrect information can have a negative impact on the case.”
Meadows enjoys her work and says she’s well compensated. The average yearly salary of legal nurse consultants is about $74,000 for those with an associate degree and about $85,000 for those with a bachelor’s degree, according to payscale.com.
Meadows and her counterparts seldom function as expert witnesses in court, although it’s sometimes their job to locate expert witnesses.
When hiring legal nurse consultants or expert witnesses, most law firms look for experience.
She advises interested nurses to ask legal nurse consultants about opportunities and to network at AALNC chapter meetings.
“Even with training, it will take you awhile to get up to speed,” she said. “Analyzing other people’s records, summarizing data and working with attorneys on strategy isn’t like what you’ve done as a nurse.”
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