If you are a registered nurse and aiming to upgrade your nursing skills and knowledge to pursue greater heights, going for a legal nurse consultant certification may be a wise move, The Center For Legal Studies points out.
Being a legal nurse consultant gives you the opportunity and authority to use your healthcare expertise, knowledge and experience in the legal field when dealing with medical-related cases. This career enables you to help your legal team analyze and evaluate testimonies and facts presented in court, and provide outcome based on a healthcare provider’s perspective.
In legal nurse consulting, you assess medical cases based on specific healthcare practices and standards. In turn, your assessment is highly valuable for your team to come up with a lawful report and output.
Thus, as a legal nurse consultant, you wear many hats; you analyze, strategize, assess, evaluate, educate, and collaborate. This makes you a great asset to the team and highly needed in the medical and legal field.
Here are three reasons to pursue a legal nurse consultant career:
Your workplace is not limited to a healthcare institution.
A legal nurse consultant ’s workplace is not limited to hospitals, clinics, and other healthcare facilities. You can work in law firms, health maintenance organizations (HMOs), insurance companies and even in government agencies.
This career also gives you the option to work with fellow legal nurse consultants in LNC firms or become a self-employed independent consultant. Thus, being an LNC gives you the opportunity to work in a legal and/or medical organization or environment that you prefer most.
It’s a great supplement to your nursing background and education.
Aside from medical-related post-study courses, becoming a certified LNC is also a great supplement to your nursing background. Aside from being able to apply your highly-needed nursing knowledge in legal matters, this career path also enables you to enhance your comprehension and analytical skills.
Moreover, for those who have always had interest in law but are in the field of nursing, pursuing legal nurse consulting might give nurses the best of both worlds, in terms of career.
Compensation-wise, it is a high-paying job.
Legal nurse consulting is undeniably a high-paying job. LNCs have the opportunity to earn $60-200 an hour depending on whether you are employed or self-employed. Also, if you are doing special services such as giving a testimony as an expert witness, you can earn as much as $150-200/hour.
These reasons are more than enough for you to highly consider pursuing legal nurse consulting. Essentially, you must first complete a degree in nursing and be a registered nurse (i.e. passing the NCLEX-RN exam). Afterwards, you must build experience and expertise by working as a nurse. Most nurses who pursue becoming LNCs have a minimum of 5 years’ experience in practicing nursing. Then, you can start on your LNC path by going for your certification. Plus, you get to choose the course format that works best for you: live lecture, online, DVD or text-only.
