Life changing events can happen in the blink of an eye. A swimmer dives into the wrong place and breaks his neck; a car accident, a child falls, all of these accidents can cause a spinal core injury; a work accident could lead to a traumatic amputation, and on and on… As a Registered Nurse you are uniquely qualified to make a real difference in someones life by putting your skills and knowledge to use in the fast growing and lucrative field of Nurse Life Care Planning- the best job for nurses you probably never heard of.
What is Nurse Life Care Planning?
Nurse Life Care Planning is an emerging field and is a specialized subset of case management that deals with catastrophic injury, personal injury, and chronic illness. It is a systematic method of identifying and quantifying the many needs of an individual, including surgeries, therapies, medicines, assisted devices, home modifications, estimated costs etc. You need to be able to project future medical and non-medical needs.
What Does A Nurse Life Care Planner Do?
Nurses in this field help patients by working with the patient, their families, insurance company, attorneys, and others to develop a life care plan – determining the future needs, services, and coasts of care needed over an estimated life span.
These nurses are advocates for their patients, some of whom cannot express their own needs.
Some Life Care planning nurses are also Legal Nurse Consultants.Check out their nursing association American Association of Nurse Life Care Planners for more information.
Nurse Life Care Planners can work for:
- Government Agencies
- Law Firms
- Insurance Companies
- HMO’s
- Independent Practice
Job opportunities into Nurse Life Care Planning:
Becoming a Nurse Life Care Planner does not require you to be certified in this specialty but you do need knowledge of what goes into a Life Care Plan.
Try networking with other nurses who are doing this and ask for an Informational interview. This is where you find a nurses’ contact info and email or call her and ask if you could interview her for a short period of time to ask questions about what she does. Nurses who love their jobs, love to talk about what they do.
You can find Nurse Life Care Planners on the professional networking site, LinkedIn. Hopefully you are already on this networking site and if not, you should be. You can do a search or look through your own connections to see if anyone in your connections is connected to them and ask for an invitation to connect.
Tina 🙂