Assist In Medical Trials In Legal Nurse Consulting
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Combine your Passions of Both Medicine and the Law by Acting as a Liaison between them in Legal Nurse Consulting
With a legal nurse consulting career, you can incorporate two very crucial and challenging careers: medicine and law. Very often law suits are taken out against doctors or hospitals, or there needs to be professional medical documentation and proof to support claims being made in court, and in those cases, a skilled registered nurse who has legal training is brought in to collect and analyse the information needed. It is a very lucrative career choice that continues to grow, especially in positions at law firms or as private consultants. It is also one of the highest paying nursing careers and better paying jobs among careers in criminal justice, matching administrators, with annual salaries averaging around $80,000 or private consulting fees listed at about $100-150 an hour. Their expertise is in high demand and allows them to follow both professional passions, so if you feel like you can't choose between a career in law and one in medicine, consider this criminal justice degree as a suitable compromise.
How to Become a Legal Nurse Consultant
Before you can work as a liaison between medicine and law, you need to focus on just becoming a registered nurse. From there you can further your education with the necessary additional training.
1. To become a registered nurse you need to attend an accredited college or university and take one of the following degree programs:
- a 2 year associate's degree in nursing
- a 4 year bachelor's degree in nursing
Both will prepare you to become a registered nurse, but if you plan on working in the nursing profession at all, a bachelor's degree will put you in a higher salary bracket.
2. Once you complete a degree program, you must pass the national certification exam (NCLEX-RN) which will license you as a registered nurse. Without it, you cannot practice.
3. Only once you have achieved this certification, can you study further to gain a certificate in legal nurse consulting or even forensic nursing. You can do these certificates online at schools like Northwestern College, Kaplan University or Sullivan University.
4. Instead of getting this additional certificate, you can substitute it with 2-3 years of clinical experience as a registered nurse.
Job Duties
As a legal nurse consultant, you will be called in to assist attorneys whenever they have a case dealing with any kind of medical situation: such as medical malpractice suits, worker's compensation and personal injury cases among others. You will have to go through all medical documents to ascertain the facts about the case from a medical standpoint in order to validate or dismiss the claims being made. The attorney will rely on you for expert reports and testimony in any healthcare situation, so legal nurse consulting professionals need to be meticulous and well experienced in order to support a lawyer's case.
Criminal Justice Degree |
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