From the President's Desk
Paralegals and Legal Nurse Consultants:
Perfect Together?
 Research
by Pat Iyer has provided some surprising information about
the functions of legal nurse consultants and paralegals.
Data was collected from paralegals, legal nurse consultants
(LNCs) and attorneys in order to define the most common
activities performed by paralegals and legal nurse consultants.
The 76 paralegals ranged from being students to those with
19 years of experience. The legal nurse consultants (27
in number) had 0-9 years of experience as LNCs. The perceptions
of 16 attorneys who had 1-29 years of experience were also
elicited. Each person was asked to review a list of functions
and to indicate if each function was an activity which a
paralegal or legal nurse consultant (or both) could perform.
Despite wide
differences in experience and perspectives, a consensus
emerged among all of the groups. The most commonly identified
legal nurse consultant activities were:
-
Identify
medical management issues
-
Identify
medical issues not addressed or explained in the records
-
Identify
malingerers
-
Point
out potential medical complications of injuries
-
Identify
medical malpractice
The most common
activities attributed to the role of the paralegal were:
Paralegals
were more easily able to identify functions of their own
profession than they were able to define the role of the
legal nurse consultant, and vice versa. Experienced paralegals,
and the attorneys, identified more functions of the legal
nurse consultant than did less experienced paralegals. One
of the conclusions of this data was that rather than being
in competition with each other, legal nurse consultants
and paralegals perform important functions that complement
each other. For example, analysis of key medical issues
by a legal nurse consultant cannot occur without the appropriate
retrieval and organization of medical records by a paralegal.
The identification of costs associated with an injury can
be competently performed by a paralegal, allowing the legal
nurse consultant to use medical expertise to focus on the
clinical issues in the case.
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