[18 Jan 2012 | No Comment | 11 views]
Arkansas Tort Law Challenged   Mr. Gerry Schulze, local Little Rock attorney, represented Ms. Teresa Broussard in a challenge to a section of the Civil Justice Reform Act of 2003 last week.  The Supreme Court has not yet given their ruling in this most interesting case. Ms. Broussard developed severe burns to her neck and upper chest after undergoing a surgical procedure in 2006.  The cause of the burns is unknown.  The case involves the treatment for the burns once they were identified.  Broussard alleges that her physicians; a nephrologist and surgeon were negligent in failing ... Read the full story »

Education, Legal Nurse Consulting »

[27 Jan 2012 | No Comment | 14 views]
Specialty Documents in Long Term Care Long term care is a highly litigated area of health care. As a legal nurse consultant (LNC) without a clinical background in long term care, I had to educate myself on this specialty. The nursing tasks were familiar but the chart was not. As I worked on more of these cases, I came to rely upon a uniform set of documents that provided a good starting point for LTC case analysis: Minimum Data Set (MDS), Resident Assessment Protocols (RAPs) and the Care Plan. Starting my analysis with these documents gave ...

Legal Nurse Consulting, Life Care Planning »

[26 Jan 2012 | No Comment | 3 views]
Supporting Your Opinions-Expert Witnesses As an independent legal nurse consultant, with over a decade of experience who has reviewed dozens of expert cases and thousands of “behind the scenes” cases and provided deposition and trial testimony, I believe that one of the most important duties of a LNC is to provide the attorney all the evidence used to support your opinions. Communicating this evidence can be accomplished in various ways. Here are some examples of nursing home cases in which I used case specific information, other than nursing or physician notes to support my opinions. 1. ...

Legal Nurse Consulting »

[21 Jan 2012 | No Comment | 5 views]
Who’s to Blame for IV Start That Caused Patient’s Nerve Injury? Who’s to Blame for IV Start That Caused Patient’s Nerve Injury? Technicality spares hospital and nurse who inserted the needle. An IV needle may have caused the nerve injuries to a patient’s wrist, but neither the nurse who inserted the IV nor the hospital she worked at are liable for the damage, according to a Texas appeals court. The expert unfortunately failed to address the standard of care and deviation from the standard.  Perhaps the expert should have been a nurse.  At the very least a legal nurse consultant could have been asked ...

Life Care Planning »

[15 Nov 2011 | No Comment | 4 views]
Bone Density Studies in the Amputee In recent years, numerous studies have examined the relative bone density values of residual limbs following amputation, comparing these against the values of the sound-side limbs or those observed in matched controls. With only rare, individual exceptions, the density values of the amputated limbs are consistently below those of controls. Does Amputation Level Matter? The answer to this question depends on who you ask. The observations of Smith et al. suggest that amputation level has no effect on BMD values at either the femoral neck or the total proximal femur.The observations from ...

case management, Workers Compensation »

[14 Nov 2011 | One Comment | 20 views]
Work Comp Case Managers: A Complex Role photo credit: Josh Liba The most important role of the case manager is to advocate while educating. Case managers must advocate on the client’s behalf to get each client the right resources and the right care at the right time and by the right provider–all while considering the patient’s own resources and abilities. Clients need to understand the information they have been given and the implications for their future, while learning how to manage and navigate the landscape on their own. The workers compensation patient has an additional learning curve ...