by Elizabeth Rudolph | Jul 18, 2016 | Legal Nurse Consulting
It’s time to do the work of actually setting your goals as a Professional Legal Nurse Consultant and figuring out how to make them happen. When it comes to business, your legal nurse consulting goals should meet a few simple criteria.
- First, they should be realistic. This doesn’t mean easy. It just means not to set a goal of going from 0 to a million dollars in six months. If you set the bar unrealistically high, you can set yourself up for disappointment. Instead, go from 0 to $25,000.00 in six months. Even up to $100,000.00 if you are an ambitious PLNC. Not only are these numbers more realistic, but even if you don’t reach them, you might get close enough to encourage you to kick it up a notch and do better the next six months.
- Once you have the realistic part down, you need a deadline. These two criteria go hand in hand. A million dollars in six months, starting from zero, might not be realistic, but it does have a deadline. However, a million dollars is not out of the question. Rather, if that is your PLNC goal, it needs a different time frame. Give yourself five years instead of six months. So, part of evaluating how realistic a goal is can lie in evaluating the timeframe for achieving that goal. Regardless, you need a deadline. By setting a time limit, you motivate yourself to do the work to reach the goal.
- Finally, your goals need to be written down. When you write down your goals, you can see if they are specific enough to be reachable. You can also step away from them, then come back and be certain that they are the right goals for you. You can either handwrite them or type them out. Whether you use your phone, laptop, desktop computer or tablet, or use paper and a pen, you must record them. The biggest advantage of writing down your goals, however, is that doing so is like making a contract with yourself. The goals are no longer in your head, but out in the world. You can see them in black and white.
Focus on only a few areas to improve. As those areas improve, the other areas will also get better, riding on the coattails, so to speak. Now, begin. You can do it!
by Elizabeth Rudolph | Jun 4, 2016 | Legal Nurse Consulting
As a Professional Legal Nurse Consultant, part of your job is marketing your services. In this age of the Internet and smartphones, advertising on the web has become common and expected. Can online legal nurse consultant marketing help you?
In short, yes. But how?
There are a few key ways to market your PLNC services online:
- Jurex Expert Directory
- Online ads
- Get published
- Launch a website
Jurex Expert Directory is your online directory for Professional Legal Nurse Consultants. As a PLNC, you login and easily create your profile. Attorneys looking for Professional Legal Nurse Consultants can access this directory. So, keep your profile current.
Online ads are just what they sound like. They are ads for your business placed on websites. Unlike print advertising, online ads don’t cost as much, and can free depending upon the website.
Getting published sounds overwhelming to most people, especially if they aren’t writers. But, if you have experience in an area you would like to highlight, write a short article (no more than 800 words) about your experience and offer it to online magazines and e-zines. You might even get paid for your contribution. But the real benefit of publishing is that it establishes your expertise and gets your name out there to potential clients.
Launch a website is relatively straight-forward. You don’t have to be a professional web designer to have one anymore. Or, use a Facebook page for your Professional Legal Nurse Consultant business. Then, you can put your online web address (your URL) on your business cards and letterhead.
The Internet is a huge resource with millions of users around the world. You probably already use it for keeping in touch, entertainment and even news. Now, use it to build your business.
by Elizabeth Rudolph | Feb 19, 2016 | Legal Nurse Consulting
Starting a new career can be scary. If you’ve worked as a nurse for a long time, the concept of starting a Professional Legal Nurse Consultant business and being your own boss can seem overwhelming. This is true for any entrepreneur or PLNC. We all have fears and doubts we must deal with when we try something for the first time.
In your mind, do you ever hear the following (or similar):
- What kind of nurse do you think you are?
- I can’t do this.
- What was I thinking?
- I am so dumb.
- This is impossible.
If you don’t hear such things in your mind, you are one of the lucky one nurses. Most of us have these negative thoughts sometimes. Some of us have them a majority of the time. But these thoughts are dangerous and need to be stopped. Such thoughts:
- Undermine our efforts as a nurse and as Professional Legal Nurse Consultant.
- Stifle our creativity.
- Lower our self-esteem.
- And, most dangerously, become self-fulfilling prophecies.
How can you stop negative thoughts that are limiting your nursing success? You need to do two things.
- You need to interrupt the negative thought. You can do this by mentally shouting “Stop it!” or by creating a physical interruption. For instance, you could make yourself do the chicken dance every time you hold onto one of these negative thoughts. This might be sufficiently embarrassing to help you stop. Just imagine doing the chicken dance in an important meeting! Or, you can choose something less obvious to others, but just as effective. In the book, The One Minute Millionaire, the authors suggest that you wear a heavy duty rubber band around your wrist and pop yourself enough to sting every time you catch yourself thinking these dangerous thoughts. How you choose to interrupt these thoughts is up to you, but you must do it every single time.
- You need to replace the negative thought with a positive one. Simply replace the thought with its opposite. “I can’t do this.” becomes “I can do this.” Nothing fancy. No memorizing. Just a replacement of a part that does not work for you with one that does.
Try this for the next month and you will be well on your way to being the best nurse, and, the best Professional Legal Nurse Consultant (PLNC) you can be.
by Elizabeth Rudolph | Jan 22, 2016 | Legal Nurse Consulting, Marketing
You want to review medical records as a Professional Legal Nurse Consultant (PLNC). You want lots of attorneys to work for and lots of cases. So, you need to brand yourself as “thee” best in your nursing field. Use these three Professional Legal Nurse Consultant branding techniques to help get your PLNC business thriving:
1. Figure out your “why”: Why do you want to review medical records? Why are you the best candidate to do this? Think about this one. Is it, maybe, because as a nurse you know how to spot the issues when you have read medical records in your current job? Are you the “go to” nurse for selected problems? Are you a problem solver? Try to get it clear in your head so you will be able to express it to others.
2. What is your passion?: Maybe you have been a nurse 15 years, maybe it has been 3 years, but specifically what is it about nursing that you are passionate about? Drill down now and think about it in detail. Is it the helping aspect or maybe it is the advocate aspect. The more detailed you are, the clearer it becomes.
3. Specifically, what sets you apart from other nurses?: Every nurse brings something to the table. What do you bring? How are you different from your nursing peers, from your PLNC peers, from your other colleagues? Think about this one. We are all unique in different ways. Your goal is to solidify your uniqueness.
Professional Legal Nurse Consultants (PLNC)’s are special. Think about your responses to these three tools to branding your nursing self and you will be well on your way to becoming the stand out PLNC you always wanted to be.
by Elizabeth Rudolph | Nov 24, 2015 | Legal Nurse Consulting
1. What are the most important advantages of being a PLNC?
2. Why do I want this change?
3. What frustrations do I have with my current job?
4. What two things can I do now to reach my goal?
5. Where would I like to be in five years and ten years?
You want to work at something that gives you pleasure, that fulfills you, provides you with advantages such as money, time off, or the ability to help others. You can find your voice as a
The choice is yours.
“The days are long, but the years are short.”
-Gretchen Rubin
by Elizabeth Rudolph | Jun 28, 2015 | Legal Nurse Consulting
As a Professional Legal Nurse Consultant, you will often have to put your thoughts and findings into writing. This may intimidate you, whether you are a nurse, physician, attorney or another other professional. Why? Because many of us hear our elementary and high school English teachers in our heads as we sit down to write:
- Your writing needs work.
- Use proper grammar.
- Work on your spelling.
These are just a few of the admonishments we heard in nursing school. But you are no longer in school and no one is grading you. That said, your written materials do need to do their job. The better you write your PLNC reports, the better you will serve your attorney. Scared? Don’t be. Writing does not have to be chore. And it does not have to read like a nursing or legal textbook.
Make your writing easier in three simple steps:
- Brainstorm
- Freewrite
- Revise
That is all there is to it. Once you do those three steps, you have a expert witnessreport you can confidently share.
Another way to approach writing is to write the way you talk. If you have trouble with this, try recording yourself as you give the clinical review report as you would if the attorney was sitting in front of you. Then, you can transcribe the recording, make small revisions and you are ready to provide your nursing merit report.
