Conflicts of interest for legal nurse consultants

A conflict of interest can disqualify you from a case, and in the worst case damage the attorney's case and your reputation. Checking takes a minute; here's how.

What counts as a conflict

• Employment: you work or worked at the facility, or in the health system, where the care happened.
• People: you know the patient, the family, or the nurses and physicians involved.
• The other side: you've consulted for the opposing party, firm or carrier on this matter or a closely related one.
• Money: you have a financial interest in a party, such as owning shares in a nursing home chain.

Working for a hospital years ago in another city isn't automatically a conflict, but it should be disclosed if the case involves the same system.

Before every proposal

1. Read the parties in the brief: facility type, location and any named organizations.
2. Check them against your work history, not just your current job.
3. If anything could look like a conflict, disclose it in your proposal and let the attorney decide.

How NurseTide Legal helps

• List your employers and affiliations from the last 10 years in your profile, one per line. Attorneys never see the list.
• Each case has a confidential list of parties. We match it against your affiliations and warn you before you propose if anything looks like the same organization.
• Every proposal asks you to confirm you have no conflict, with space to disclose anything relevant.

The matching catches obvious overlaps. It can't know about personal relationships or work you didn't list, so your own check still matters.

If a conflict appears after you're hired

Tell the attorney right away, in the case messages. Stop work until they decide how to proceed.

Switching sides

Working for plaintiffs and defense across different cases is normal and often makes a better expert. What's not acceptable is working for both sides of the same matter, or using confidential information from one engagement in another.