Top 7 Tips For Presenting Your Credentials For Medical Legal Work Patricia Iyer MSN RN LNCC President, Med League Support Services, Inc. and co- presenter of an all new webinar on polishing your writing skills. Choose between a resume and a curriculum vitae (C.V.) . A resume is a brief (no more than 1-2 pages) summary of your educational and employment history. A C.V. is a longer and more detailed description of education, employment, awards, honors, publications, membership in professional associations, and offices held. To properly demonstrate expertise, legal nurse consultants and expert witnesses are more likely going to prepare a C.V. 1. In your C.V., include the important and basic information. Don’t overlook adding your phone number and email, as well as an address. Avoid adding extraneous details such as religious affiliation, names and ages of children, hobbies and interests. 2. List each of your jobs in reverse order, starting with the most current job. Include the starting and ending years, the name of the employer, your title, and a brief description of your job responsibilities and accomplishments. 3. Look at your background through the eyes of the attorney who is reviewing your credentials. Stress your clinical experience if you are seeking work as an expert witness. Avoid stating you serve as an expert, as this makes you look like a hired gun. Avoid including education you completed to become a legal nurse consultant if you are seeking expert witness work, as this may make you look like a “legal nurse” rather than a “clinical nurse”. 4. Design your C.V. to make good use of white space, bold, and serif fonts. For example, don’t crowd your C.V by using a small font. Allow one inch margins all around. Place bold on the names of the places where you worked, and then unbold your job description and accomplishments. Use a serif font (with little feet) rather than a sans serif font. Serif fonts are perceived as friendlier. Avoid difficult to read fonts. 5. Thoroughly proofread your C.V. and ask another person to check it as well. Typos on a C.V. can be enough to take you out of consideration for being hired. Check dates carefully. 6. If you worked in more than one place during the same time frame, place (part time) after your position to help someone who is reviewing your C.V understand the overlap. Otherwise, your overlapping dates may be seen as typos. 1 7. Keep your C.V. current on an ongoing basis. It is far easier to produce an updated C.V. in a hurry than it is to have to make changes under pressure. 2 Top 7 Ways in Which Writing for Attorneys is Different From Writing for Professors Patricia Iyer MSN RN LNCC, President of Med League and co-presenter of an all new webinar on polishing your writing skills Many legal nurse consultants have college degrees and recall laboring over term papers. The writing you do for attorneys is different from academic writing in several ways. 1. Academic writing is heavily cited. The more footnotes, the better, according to some professors. Reports written for attorneys may contain some footnotes or links to internet sites, but this are usually kept to a minimum. 2. The person reading an academic paper can be assumed to understand common terms. The language you used was familiar to the reader - your professor. The attorney may not be familiar with terms and medical conditions. The attorney appreciates definitions and spelled out abbreviations. 3. Your professor typically gave you an expected number of pages for your paper. The attorney will rarely define page length for a report. 4. A professor rewarded you for a paper that went into great depth, and explored each nuance of a subject. An attorney wants you to get to the point. What are your conclusions, analysis, and the pertinent facts? The attorney is busy and often does not have the time to wade through volumes of material. The attorney needs you to prepare a focused report, providing details and facts related to the issues in the case. The attorney may not be willing to pay for an unfocused lengthy report containing too many irrelevant details. 5. Your professor started the semester by telling you when your assignments were due. You knew well in advance. Your attorney client may give you a rush assignment that requires you to set aside other priorities and pour out the energy needed to complete the work. If the client does not provide a due date, the LNC must be sure to complete the work in a timely manner. 6. In college, you often had a certain latitude in selecting what you would write about. The topic you picked for a term paper may have been one that intensely interested you. When you help an attorney with a case, you may have little or no choice about which case you are given to work on. Furthermore, you may have little familiarity with case issue or have little interest in that particular medical issue. 7. Colleges share guidelines about their requirements for a writing style. They define what system to use for citations, the number of inches for margins, the cover page 3 layout, and so on. Attorneys rarely define the expected layout for a report, chronology, or timeline. This flexibility, and emphasis on content rather than format, gives the legal nurse consultant an opportunity to be creative. Both your professor and your attorney client are interested in clear writing that conveys information in a meaningful way. 4 Build your LNC Practice through First Impressions Dana Jolly, BSN, RN, LNCC, Principal, Jolly Consulting, LLC & Legal Nurse Consulting Institute, LLC and co-presenter of an all new webinar on polishing your writing skills The first report a LNC produces for a new client is equivalent to a first impression. We all know how important first impressions are. For LNCs, they can have even more significance. A good report highlights the value of a LNC. It can launch a LNC career, revive a struggling LNC practice or expand a growing LNC practice. Busy litigators are only going to give LNCs one chance to make a good impression through their work product. The LNC’s clients need to be able to “hit the ground running” with the medical facts. They need a tool to quickly identify the medical facts and understand the implications of those facts on their case strategy. Analytical and writing skills are critical in developing such a tool. A poorly written analysis does not help the client. The client won’t see the value the LNC brings to the litigation team and in all likelihood, that LNC won’t be given another chance. So, how does a LNC write a report that will WOW their client turning a one-time client into a customer for life? Here are a few tips on performing spot-on case analysis to get started. 1. Remember the purpose of the report. I think of this as the bottom line of the report. What is it the client needs to know? Identifying the issues of the case with the client ensures the LNC will deliver the information the client seeks. 2. What format does the client prefer? Some LNC clients won’t have a preference. If they do, of course follow it (at least for the first report). If the report is a narrative account of the facts, it should read like a story. Other formats include tables, bulleted lists, and timelines. Regardless of how the information is presented, objectivity and brevity are paramount. 3. Be clear on deadlines. When does the client expect the report? It is always good when a LNC can exceed the client’s expectations. One way to do this is to produce a report ahead of the deadline. 4. Develop a system to review medical records Identify relevant providers from whom records should be requested/subpoenaed. Organize those records chronologically and provide the client with an easily navigated set of all provider records. 5 5. Draft the report The first task is identifying relevant medical facts found in the medical records. Focus on critical documents/facts identified by the issues in the case. For example, if the case involves an organ injury during surgery, chances are EMS and ED records are not critical. The next task is the analysis portion of the report. Analysis uses the LNC’s informed opinions. Begin analysis by focusing on the purpose of the report. For example, medical malpractice analysis focuses on the delivery of health care and its outcomes. Personal injury analysis focuses on related injuries. Analysis also includes the impact of injuries, significance of preexisting conditions, and discrepancies/inconsistencies. Address central issues in simple terms. Do the medical facts support the plaintiff’s allegations? Remember, the report is a communication tool. Be sure it is easy to understand. Always keep the end in mind – how will this report be used by your client? 6 Common Pitfalls in Report Writing Angie Duke-Haynes, RN is President of Premier Medical Legal Consulting, LLC, co- owner of Legal Nurse Consulting Institute, LLC and co-presenter of an all new webinar on polishing your writing skills. The inexperienced legal nurse consultant learns in the same way as the new clinical nurse – through on the job training. In nursing school we gain a tremendous amount of “book smarts” in the classroom but the most valuable training is accomplished in the clinical setting. Likewise, a nurse can learn the basics of legal nurse consulting though nothing solidifies this knowledge like hands-on case review experience.