What Do Legal Nurse Consultants Do?

Legal nurse consultants are a bridge between the legal and medical worlds. An experienced legal nurse consultant can provide personal injury and wrongful death law firms, as well as attorneys handling toxic torts, environmental law, and criminal defense, with invaluable expertise in a wide range of areas, from case review, to identifying causation, to determining the likelihood of long-term complications and consequences, to testifying at trial. 

As a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant (CLNC®), Lynn Andersen has undergone specific, rigorous training to align her nursing and medical expertise with the dynamics of medical legal cases. She is certified to provide expertise in all phases of your litigation including:

• Identifying proper standards of care. 
• Identifying omissions and/or substandard care. 
• Reviewing and summarizing complex electronic medical records.
• Creating chronologies, interrogatories and case summaries.
• Evaluate and explain the extent of injuries and pre-existing conditions.
• Serving as an expert plaintiff or defense witness.

Nurse Consultant Case Reviews

The reality of today’s electronic medical records, is case review can be virtually impossible without extensive training and an understanding of the medical field. From common abbreviations and acronyms, to typical courses of treatment and standards of care, hiring a professional nurse consultant brings invaluable expertise to the medical side of your legal case. 

At LYNN ANDERSEN NURSE CONSULTING, her decades of nursing and regulatory compliance expertise is translated into a cost-effective medical insider dedicated to all of your litigation needs – from case screening through to mediation or trial.

Nurse Consultation in Medical Malpractice 

Lynn is frequently called upon to augment an attorney’s legal expertise in building a case for damages in all types of medical malpractice, including: 

• Failure to treat: Delayed treatment can make treatment more invasive, as well as less successful, and will most often lead to a substandard or terminal outcome. 
• Medication errors: An increasing number of cases involved errors in the prescription or administration of medication. In some cases, the wrong medication is prescribed or administered, while in other cases a combination of medications results in a bad outcome. Extensive knowledge of the interactions of various medications is required. 
• Anesthesia errors: Heart attack, stroke, asphyxia, trachea injury, brain damage and death are the most common results of cases involving anesthesia error. 
• Failure to diagnose/misdiagnoses: Such errors are involved in far more cases than are ever identified. Delay in treatment and improper treatment often result in poor outcomes. 
• Birth injuries: Erb’s Palsy, forcep injuries and pre-eclampsia are among the most common. These cases can impact the health and welfare of both mother and child. 
• Surgical errors: This very specialized area of medicine, requires an equally specifilized case review. Each procedure has its own standards of care, complications, and potential outcomes. Many of these cases go unlitigated because a law firm does not understand, or never uncovers, the factors of causation. 

Nurse Consultation Case Review 

Lynn Andresen has over 30 years of expert nursing experience, and has worked for 15 years as a nursing consultant. She has extensive experience with state and federal compliance regulations and has skilled insight into patient care and acceptable standards of care, that have made her an expert witness. 

She offers expert medical review, interpretation and advice in cases involving complex medical claims, including: 

• Case review: She reviews cases for law firms to determine claim viability, as well as case needs and likelihood of a successful outcome. 
• Causation: With more than 30 years of nursing experience, including work in tn Post Anesthesia Care and with Orthopedic and spinal surgical care, Lynn provides comprehensive case review to identify all factors of causation. 
• Outcome: She provides law firms with the knowledge to determine likely outcomes, as well as the likelihood of long-term disability and future medical complications. 
• Standards of care: Lynn provides valuable insight into where medical care deviated from the accepted standards of care. 
• Expert Witness: She provides independent expert witness testimony, delivered in a way jurors can respect and understand. 

Too often, law firms do not take a case they know they could win if they had access to the medical expertise needed to prevail in the negotiating room and in the courtroom. In other cases, valuable information, or additional factors of causation, are missed. And in some cases, law firms accept the responsibility of representing a client or family before they have a thorough understanding of the viability of a case or what it will take to win. 

Lynn Andersen Nurse Consulting L.L.C. provides free consultations, and professional and comprehensive services at every state of litigation, from intake to resolution. Call her direct at 719-237-4415.