During the twentieth century, drugs were administered with much less care that in the current medical settings. Your host, Pat Iyer, recalls sometimes-fatal insulin shock therapy being administered to psychiatric patients.

However, the rising number of deaths from medical and medication errors in the U. S. has made this crisis a significant issue, both in medical and legal arenas.

Christine Dorman, a critical care nurse practitioner, has a doctorate and is a legal nurse consultant who specializes in critical issues. She brings her expertise to our discussion about how medication errors occur and how they can be prevented.

Rick Jeune is a speaker and consultant who specializes in small businesses. He has created several successful businesses and is starting another one. He brings his expertise in the world of small business to this podcast.

He believes that three primary principles that help to create a successful business. Self-knowledge is the first of these. If you don’t know who you are, and if you aren’t aware of how you change, you won’t know how to be in relationship with others, especially your clients.

When it comes to nursing and doctors’ care, procedures, documentation, and much more, a nursing home environment differs greatly from that of an acute care facility. Irene Nobles, an LNC who specializes in long-term care cases, shares some of the most crucial differences.

One major difference is regulatory. Very different governmental standards apply to overall care in a nursing home. One reason for this is the heightened vulnerability of the patient population. One complexity is that regulations may vary from state to state, but federal regulations take priority.

Working as an LNC is all about the details—and the practitioner has to consider many details beyond those in the case material you receive. Ally Kayton, an LNC and neonatal specialist with a Ph.D. in nursing, highlights some of the critical areas with which an LNC must be familiar.

She emphasizes the importance of checking for conflict. Because smaller practices are increasingly merging and often become part of national network, LNCs may work for several years on a case only to find that a conflict of interest has developed.

Beth Zorn is one of the pioneers in the LNC field, having worked as a legal nurse consultant for 35 years. She has extensive experience both as an in-house LNC, both for defense and plaintiff firms. Her information and advice will be invaluable for anyone considering in-house LNC work.

One primary distinction between plaintiff and defense work is that in the defense situation, cases may have been prescreened by the insurance company. In a plaintiff environment, paralegals often do the initial screening work. LNCs will evaluate cases that have some promise.

Beth takes us through the various stages of a case’s evolution, which is similar in both defense and plaintiff situations.

How can a nurse most smoothly make the transition from clinical work to working as an LNC? Abigail Rogers presents the unique perspective of someone who’s currently engaged in that process.

She works as a neonatal nurse and is also getting her master’s degree in nursing. Her academic advisor told her that her intensive care unit background would serve her well if she chose to go into legal nurse consulting. This possibility appealed to Abby, and she began thoroughly researching the field.

Abigail’s research process could serve as a blueprint for those wondering how they can learn more about being an LNC. She explored AALNC and made direct contact with LNC in her area. People were very helpful, and she learned how diverse a field legal nurse consulting can be.

Thank you for listening to Legal Nurse Podcast. On September 6, 2016, I launched this podcast. We are celebrating today. This is the five hundredth show!

When I first thought of sharing tips with you in the form of a podcast, the idea of getting the technology straightened out was a bit daunting. A business coach I hired helped me work through the steps and helped me get everything ready.

At the beginning of Legal Nurse Podcast, I released 2 shows a week. The first was an interview and two days later, the second show was a monologue I created based on the same topic our guest covered.

My cohost Kelly Campbell joined me for about a year and contributed ideas and guests.

In July 2020, Barbara Levin and I began planning virtual conferences and I decided to drop the second episode of the week.

Here’s what people tell me: you listen when taking a walk, driving, cleaning the house and working out.

The podcast has over one hundred thirty-six thousand downloads. Our listeners are in 92 countries. The top numbers of listeners are in the United States, Japan, Canada, Australia, UK and Germany.

Eighty three percent of you listen to the podcast on mobile devices. The rest are going to our website, podcast.legalnursebusiness.com

Here’s what I’ve found. LNCs tell me that they dip into the vault of past shows and listen to current and older episodes. They appreciate the tips and hearing from a variety of LNCs and experts.

The pandemic has caused widespread awareness of the burnout experienced by medical workers. Most people, though, don’t realize that burnout was already a critical issue among healthcare personnel. Increased pressure to see ever-greater numbers of patients, 12-hour shifts, and the constant burden of never having enough time ensured that the medical system, especially in hospitals, was already broken.

Dr. Hamid Elmyar, who currently works in the area of public health, digs deeply into this problem. As a doctor committed to unearthing the root causes of illness, he has developed a comprehensive and global approach to the question of whether burnout is reversible.

He points out that according to WHO, health is not just merely the absence of disease, it's the wellbeing of the social, physical, and mental being. According to his thinking, sweeping changes are needed at the individual, institutional, and population levels.

Individuals need to take all possible measures to ensure that they have health at the social, physical, and mental levels. Medical institutions need to stop characterizing burnout as a stigma and make appropriate structural changes at the preventive level. Populations need wider education about the root causes of illness.

It’s also important for those not directly associated with the medical situations, such as entrepreneurs, including LNCs, that burnout can occur in any occupation. LNCS, who often assume heavy workloads, especially when they give in to attorney’s excessive demands, are prime candidates for burnout.

She is the only in-house LNC in her firm, with three other LNCs working remotely. While she works on her own cases, she also organizes the work done by the other LNCs. She is, in addition, actively involved in trial prep work, finding expert witnesses, and interacting directly with clients. Now that live trials are beginning again, she looks forward to attending some.

Although Chelsea wondered how she would adjust to the huge differences in environment between a clinical setting and a law office, she finds the quiet atmosphere refreshing. She’d worried about the lack of activity and the increased necessity to focus; she has adjusted well. And she doesn’t miss the 12-hour shifts.

For Chelsea, working in-house has many other positive aspects. She likes knowing how each of the attorneys in the firm want their reports to be written. She is also able to, on a weekly basis, make everyone in the firm of the responsibilities she has to accomplish. This means that they can see how their needs fit into her schedule of pre-existing work.

For those who would like to work in an in-house environment, she acknowledges that these situations, being highly desirable, get filled very quickly. She suggests that if you want this kind of work, you need to persist, as she did. And she’s never regretted it.

The pandemic and other stressors have made the general public realize what mindfulness practitioners have known for centuries: Stress is a direct cause of illness and death.

Anne-Marie was already committed to practicing mindfulness when her father developed Alzheimer’s and her mother Lewy body dementia. She was able to get through this extreme difficulty far better than did the 67% of caregivers who die before those for whom they are caring.

Following this experience, she focused all her professional attention on promoting mindfulness. In this podcast, she breaks down the principles and practices in a way that anyone can follow.