Observation: Legal Nurse Consultant Essays

Submitted By AshleyRenfrow1
Words: 586
Pages: 3

One of the benefits of working for United Healthcare Clinical Services is that my company has many departments dedicated to the legalities of healthcare and insurance. I was fortunate enough to be able to sit down with one of the legal nurse consultants on staff at UHC. I shadowed Shannon Mulvey October 11, 2011 in the St. Louis, Missouri office for eight hours. I learned many things during this assignment. The first thing I learned was that legal nurse consulting is not all trials and jet-setting across the globe to “save the day”. I realized that there is a lot of paperwork and even more research involved in doing this job. Shannon sat down with me in the morning and started by asking if I had any questions about the job. I had plenty, but she was terrific and patient when describing her duties and what the job entails. We went over her qualifications to start. She has her MSN, a forensic nursing certificate from Kaplan University (2008), and has 15 years of clinical experience in an intensive care setting. Seven of those years were spent in the NICU. I learned that she started at UHC in 2004 and began as an ICM (Inpatient Care Manager). She then moved up to a position as supervisor in 2008. After 1 year in this position she decided that she wanted to utilize her certification and move into a position that focused on forensics. She moved into the legal department in June of 2009 and has been there ever since. She now works with attorneys and administration when evaluating healthcare claims within our company or in preparing for medical malpractice suits. Shannon could not disclose sensitive documents to me but she was able to verify that her position keeps her very busy. In a large insurance company, there are new claims and suits for her to address all the time. Her clinical background combined with her knowledge of the law is integral to her job and assisting the attorneys with these cases. She showed me that it may be incredibly time-consuming and tedious to collect and verify all of the data available. She will scour charts and assist with preparing