Is It Expensive To Gain A Paralegal Education?

It was in the late 1960's that the concept of having a paralegal was born. It started when lawyers were looking for ways on how to better serve their clients without increasing the overall cost of their legal services.
How to distinguish paralegals from lawyers?
The tasks of the lawyers are regulated by laws and policies of each state in the US. Although laws vary from state to state, each state prohibits paralegals from practicing law.
Paralegals cannot perform the following:
• Presenting cases in a court of law
• Accepting or refusing a case
• Providing legal advice
However, paralegals can carry out the following functions:
• Updating clients about their case
• Researching legal documents to assist lawyers in handling their legal cases
• Drafting legal documents
Paralegal education costs
Unlike the educational costs related to becoming a lawyer, the cost of earning a paralegal education does not involve a heavy price tag. Although paralegal careers are not as lucrative as the careers of a lawyer, paralegals can earn decent salary. In addition to that, they do not have to spend thousands of dollars each year for their paralegal education yet they can still land a high-paying career within the legal industry.
Paralegal schools
Nowadays, finding a paralegal school is no longer as frustrating as it was before. With the birth of online schools and colleges, you can earn a legal education right at the comfort of your own home.
What are the various paralegal educational options available?
• Associate's degree in paralegal studies - This educational degree is offered by community colleges, technical schools, and other institutions of higher learning. To obtain an associate degree in paralegal studies, you need to spend two to three years studying paralegal courses.
• Bachelor's degree in paralegal studies - This paralegal education option enables you to earn a bachelor's degree and obtain more detailed necessary training that can prepare you to become a legal assistant. In here, you will learn the proper ways to communicate with clients, lawyers and other individuals that work in the legal field. Having this educational degree opens your door to more job opportunities in the paralegal world.
• Paralegal certificate - This option requires completing a bachelor's degree in a certain field of study before you can obtain a paralegal certificate. It takes a few months of intense study about the existing laws. To obtain paralegal certificate without actually going to a certain school, you may opt to earn online paralegal degrees from any of the online paralegal accredited schools.
Caution when opting for online paralegal degrees
When you choose to become a paralegal and obtain relevant degrees over the Internet, be sure to study your options. The reason for this is that some of these schools are nothing but hoax. Thus, you need to make sure that the one you choose is one of the paralegal accredited schools approved by the American Bar Association.
Paralegal education does not have a heavy price tag. It may not carry a high-paying salary but legal assistant's careers do offer reasonable salaries and huge bonuses. To become a paralegal, you are required to obtain any of the paralegal courses from one of the paralegal accredited schools. If you opt to earn online paralegal degrees, be sure that the school you wish to attend to is approved by the American Bar Association. Else, you will only end up spending your hard-earned money for nothing.

Brief Overview of Legal Nursing Career

These days, nursing is no longer limited to working in hospitals and long-term care facilities. There are now a number opportunities available for those who are looking to go into the nursing field. One that is becoming increasingly popular is legal nurse consulting.

A legal nurse consultant provides an expert medical opinion in legal proceedings. They assist legal professionals on health care issues and provide insight into medical procedures and terminology.

Most civil and criminal court cases involve some type of medical concern, including malpractice suits, personal injury claims, and worker's compensation disputes. A legal nurse consultant helps attorneys and judges understand complicated medical information as it pertains to such legal matters. Consultants rely on their extensive practical nursing experience to investigate and interpret medical records from a legal perspective.

If you are interested in applying your medical expertise in the practice of the law, then legal nursing is the right career choice for you. You will be working with attorneys, insurance companies, and risk management divisions of hospitals, or you may even operate your own independent consulting practices.

Your duties in the field of legal nursing may include analyzing medical records, preparing medical reports and providing testimony as an expert witness. Legal cases involving medical malpractice, worker's compensation, health insurance fraud, patient abuse might benefit from your analysis and testimony.

Since most lawyers and judges do not have extensive medical backgrounds, they rely on you to help them understand technical details and educate them on medical matters. Similarly, a physician might need help from a legal nurse consultant to understand court charges and proceedings. You will also be called upon to help attorneys prepare official statements and determine the most appropriate lines of questioning to use on witnesses and defendants.

A legal nurse consultant is a licensed registered nurse. In the US, this means that you have been granted a certificate by your state allowing you to practice nursing. In order to become a legal nurse consultant, you have to have at least three years of experience in working in a medical center. That includes doctor's offices, clinics, hospitals, nursing homes, and rehabilitation centers.

To become a legal nurse consultant, it is important that you are able to speak well and express your thoughts and opinions clearly. You may be called on the witness stand to give expert testimony on healthcare issues. A clear presentation of the facts of a case can make you a more credible expert witness.

 

Legal Aspects of Nursing

Nurses have a lot of responsibilities, some which leaves behind legal implications.  As a nurse, it is important to become aware of the legal aspects that accompany provision of care in the healthcare industry (Pozgar, 2002). It has become evident that the more negligence cases there are in the field, the less the people who want to enter into the nursing field due to fear of legal implications and inventible suits that arise in the course of provision of nursing care. Legal issues in nursing have developed since the 1903 nursing registration was enacted and over the years, nursing law has evolved  to a thick book that need to be read and understood by  students, novice, and practicing nurses (Pozgar, 2002). As the number of Advanced Practice Nurses increase, nurses are also assuming more responsibilities. It ensures prompt identification of risk and liabilities that are involved in provision of nursing care.

Nursing law is therefore meant to assist nurses in decision making process to ensure that they avoid instances that can lead to legal suits. In addition, nursing law is meant to streamline provision of nursing care in such a way that nurses assume liability for medical malpractices.  Nursing law is therefore meant to protect both patients and nurses in provision of nursing care

Most nurses are familiar with the Tort Law. Tort Law can be defined as the law that mainly deals with nursing malpractices and negligence cases (Brent, 2001).  Many nurses are concerned with deep understanding of this law because it constitutes one the biggest fears in the medical fraternity.

It defines nurses' responsibility and liabilities as far as patient care is concerned. A Tort is defined as a wrongful act which is most likely to produce harm, whether it is intentional or unintentional. Nursing malpractice can therefore be defined as a type of Tort in which the standards of nursing care are not achieved.  Therefore, Tort law is the most common and familiar laws that nurses and other medical practitioners need to be familiar with to avoid incidences that may be regarded as medical malpractices and make them face legal suits (Pozgar, 2002).

In order to protect themselves from malpractice suits, nurses are obliged to take extra precaution during nursing care in their daily shift (Brent, 2001).  They must ensure accurate recording, documenting, and reporting on daily routines and decisions they make. This constitute one of the most common way in which  nurse make sure they are on track  in nursing care.  During their nursing education, nurse are made to understand that proper patient care does not only constitute making the right decision but also maintaining and organizing proper medical records and reports for their patients. A nurse who cannot provide written proof for the decision made describing how the decision was reached at may be charged with nurses' negligence and are at an increased risk of being prosecuted in a court of law.

Legal aspects of nursing are therefore important to any nurse. They are taught at school and every nurse is expected to uphold them throughout the nursing career (Brent, 2001). For one to be employed as a nurse academic and personal skills are very important but they do not surpass the knowledge in medical laws because they should be applied in case there is a misunderstanding or any challenge by a patient or from their family. Many people aspire to take up a nursing career but without the necessary legal knowledge that pertains to nursing, not many hospitals will be willing to hire them. Legal aspects of nursing are therefore important because they protect both patient and the nurse. They define the limits of nursing liability as far as malpractices are concerned and shield patient from nurse malpractices.

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Nursing Continuing Education

After a nurse receives the certificate or diploma necessary to work legally as a registered nurse, he or she is eligible to enroll in nursing continuing education, which emphasizes specialized fields in the nursing and medical fields and returns another certificate upon completion of the program. Some of the continuing nursing education fields available to registered nurses are: legal issues of health care, nursing administration and managerial skills, distinctive health care issues such as brain injury or paraplegic care, and working as an instructor in the physical, medical or social sciences. Educational institutions differ in the types of courses that they offer to the nurse wanting to pursue further advancement in the field of nursing, such as programs, which allow a R.N. to succeed as a nurse practitioner, or even eventually a physician.

Depending on the regulations held by the state in which a nurse obtains her degree, he or she may have to take nursing continuing education courses in order to retain their license.

These are referred to as "continuing education units" or CEU's, and are necessary for anyone employed in the medical field as they will instruct the nurse or physician about the latest developments and advances in medicine. Some of the states which do not mandate continuing education are Maryland, South Dakota, Virginia, and Connecticut. About half of all other states demand a certain amount of continuing education to maintain licensure. However, an advanced practical nurse is allowed to forego the nursing continuing education process in only one state, Arizona. The other forty-nine states ask for re-recertification by supplemental education courses to keep a license if you are an advanced practical nurse.

A good thing about nursing continuing education is that many registered nurses are able to attend these courses for free because their current employer will offer a grant that will pay for them, which is reimbursed to them by the government. In addition, there are several CEU programs available online, which offer flexible scheduling for the nurse who is working full-time but needs to be re-certified by taking a certain amount of courses. CEU classes can consist of a one-time seminar to lengthier sessions that may need to be tested over when completed. One "contact hour" is equal to sixty minutes, with ten "contact hours" needed to accomplish one CEU. An example of what are needed regarding "contact" hours is the California's requirement that a registered nurse must show that he or she has finalized thirty contact hours in two years for the state to grant a renewal of a nursing license.

However, be aware that these nursing continuing education points will not supplement the earning of a degree. These CEU units merely represent what is needed for a registered nurse to keep the licensure necessary to be employed as a certified nurse. The fundamental reason behind CEU's is so nurses can remain cognizant of relevant, up-to-date information in order to better assist the sick and injured.