While the primary vocational call of a nurse is to provide direct care to patients at the bedside, many nurses are hoping to enhance their career scope and enter into other exciting nursing fields beyond the bedside. Legal nurses have the ability to work on legal issues that pertain to nursing and also to many other health care professionals. A major role of a legal nurse consultant is to provide expert witness testimony. In such cases, this nurse expert will actually develop a case related to officially recognized standards of nursing care. In the expert role, the nurse will then present the standards of care in the court room and demonstrate to the jury just how and why there were deviations from the standards of care. Why this type of work is research intensive and professionally challenging, the high benefits of having a nurse testify in a case has been established. Besides having skills and knowledge in issue related to nursing malpractice, the nurse must also have considerable expertise in the clinical practice area of the nursing specialty for which the malpractice case is being heard. Nurse expert witnesses are in high demand today.
