A critical aspect of any catastrophic injury lawsuit involves the determination of the injured party’s future medical care. The life care plan is a tool that is written by a professional and often used to specifically identify all of the future care (medical and non-medical) needs of the injured party. The life care plan addresses the costs and frequency of the needed goods and services over a lifetime. It will project the needed equipment, replacement scheduled and maintenance.
In many cases attendant care is needed. The plan will determine …

Inpatient falls and fall-related injuries continue to be the largest category of reported incidents in the acute care setting. Falls occur in many settings: In one week, my colleague received four calls about falls: a young brain injured woman who fell off a treadmill at home while under the care of an aide, an elderly woman who fell getting off an examining table in a doctor’s office, a woman who fell in the hospital just before the nurse reached her side, and a man who fell walking out an adult …

Image via Wikipedia

My friend Pat Iyer, a legal nurse consultant in Flemington, New Jersey, struggled to make her practice successful. She wondered where the next client was going to come from. She worried about making ends meet. And then she cracked the code. She learned how to create outstanding work products that keep attorneys returning with case after case. Pat is past president of the American Association of Legal Nurse Consultants, and chief editor of the core curriculum of legal nurse consulting: Principles and Practices of Legal Nurse Consulting, Second …

Legal nurse consultants work in a variety of fields.  Typically nurses get interested in this exciting field after being targeted by mass marketing efforts from for-profit centers touting “certification.”  Nurses typically work at the bedside and consult on the side for the legal environment, but some nurses find themselves in the midst of the legal environment while at the bedside.
Forensic nursing is one such area.  The very definition of forensic science is utilizing science to answer questions of the legal system.  We typically use the word “forensic” in reference to …