LNCtips.com: Behind-the-Scenes

I'm often asked how I come up with topics for my website and newsletter.  The answer is easy. I write about situations that I encounter in my day-to-day life as a legal nurse consultant. So here's a peek into the behind-the-scenes reasons for some of the newsletters and webpages.

For example, I created the webpage about Portfolios  because I had interviewed for a law firm position and tried unsuccessfully to convince the attorneys and administrator that I could do the job. I had been an independent legal nurse consultant but law firms wanted LNCs with law firm experience. When I left the interview, I decided that instead of TELLING attorneys that I could do the job, I would SHOW them what I could do. I developed a portfolio and took it to my next interview. That firm also wanted someone with law firm experience but when they saw my portfolio, they hired me over experienced candidates.

I wrote some of my webpages based on my experiences supervising and teaching new legal nurse consultants. For example, I supervised some new legal nurse consultants who were overwhelmed with all the information in the medical records. These new LNCs had difficulty succinctly summarizing the information.  I drew upon my high school journalism class, which taught me the 5Ws and 1H of reporting key facts of a news story. The 5Ws and 1 H principle was great for teaching new LNCs how to determine the key facts of the case and condensing those key facts into a summary format.

Another webpage that I created discussed focusing the analysis of medical records. I had supervised several new legal nurse consultants who were great RNs. However, they honed in on the medical aspects of the case without considering the legal aspects. Knowledge of the legal aspects of the case and the way the medical and legal aspects intertwine are as important as knowing the pathophysiology of a medical diagnosis. The Focused Analysis  webpage outlines the technique that I used with new legal nurse consultants to get them to consider the legal aspects of the case and help them focus on where to look in the medical records. 

I wrote the webpage about smart and dumb networking based on experiences at my local chapter meetings of the American Association of Legal Nurse Consultants. In particular, there were two  new legal nurse consultants who came to every chapter dinner meeting. They wore their hospital uniforms, ate their dinner together, and sat next to each other. They never shared business cards, joined a committee, offered to help with anything, or interacted with anyone else. Attempts by other members to engage them were fruitless. After a few years, they both stopped coming to the meetings. They never got any business from their "networking" attempts because other members never got to know them or their abilities.

A final behind-the-scenes example is the LNCtips.com logo. I had searched for a logo concept to emphasize that the website's purpose was to provide information for new legal nurse consultants. I designed the logo to show a yellow highlighter after an attorney gave me a batch of medical records that were highlighted in blue. Blue highlighter, and all the other highlighter colors except yellow, can obliterate underlying text when pages are copied. Those blue-highlighted records reminded me that I didn't know about highlighter colors before I started as an LNC and that other new legal nurse consultants might not either. And thus was born the LNCtips.com logo.

...Katy Jones