Imagine being rushed to the emergency room after a car accident and being greeted by a paralegal who’s tasked with preparing you for the operating room. In the same way you’d likely prefer a nurse perform your pre-op procedures in the ER and not a paralegal, a legal nurse can apply their medical know how to your case.
Legal Nurses
While paralegals are excellent resources and well-trained to offer complex litigation support, unless they also completed nursing school their lens to make meaning of medical records is different than that of a legal nurse. A nurse goes through several years of medical coursework before earning their credential as an RN. They are required to know the ins and outs of medications, dosage, anatomy, physiology and much more that the average person simply doesn’t know.
Additionally, nurses are familiar with medical documentation and can pinpoint information that can make or break your case! Perhaps a legal nurse finds records of a pressure sore hidden in routine documentation several weeks before it reached Stage 4 ultimately leading to the unnecessary death of your plaintiff. This could drastically impact the case settlement and highlight abuse and neglect by the health provider.
Furthermore, a legal nurse may notice a deviation from standard operating procedures regarding your plaintiff’s injuries. Would a paralegal know there’s commonly an assessment/evaluation performed at the onset of a condition? Or would a paralegal know alternative options available for treating the presenting problem? It’s unlikely a paralegal has the necessary medical training to uncover these key components for your case and hiring an ALSP that offers legal nurse consulting services is an opportunity to improve the case outcome.
Medical Experts
Legal nurse consultants are also an asset to your litigation team because of their unique exposure to other medical professionals. Legal nurses can recommend medical experts to testify on behalf of your plaintiff in court. They can research the potential expert, verify their credentials and get them up to speed on their research of the case to help prepare them for trial.
Let the Expert Showcase their Expertise!
If you wouldn’t want a nurse representing you in a court of law, don’t expect your paralegal to organize medical records or perform comprehensive case evaluations.
Ready to hire a team of legal nurse consultants for your next case? Contact Global Litigation Consultants to learn about the expanse of services available to your firm!
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