How To Become A Contract Nurse Case Manager
There are a number of "How to" books, websites that provide training and guides on how to become an Independent Contract Nurse Case Manager or legal nurse consultant and for $$$ you can be on your way to a truly marvelous career. A particularly great place to start is at Nurse Entrepreneur Network. For those of a more frugal nature and who have a self-starter attitude and aptitude, you can just do a search on the internet and you'll find plenty of information to get you started. I'm just going to cover some basics here. First, in order to become an independent contract nurse case manager you must be at least an RN, unfortunately LPN's aren't recognized as "professional" nurses, even though they most certainly are. That's ok, there are other areas of the case management industry where LPN's are considered most valuable, we'll discuss that in another article. So, you need to be an RN. You should have some case management experience and ideally you should also have certification in case management (CCM).
If you don't have experience or certification, you should probably put yourself out there as a task nurse only at first. As a task nurse, you will be doing the leg work for the actual case manager who manages the file telephonically. You would actually be their eyes and ears and most usually will attend office visits or therapy visits with a patient. You will be told exactly what is expected of you and given instruction to obtain particular information. By working as a task nurse you can get your feet wet and learn what is expected in case management. During this time it would also be a good idea to take a course on case management and to work towards certification. There are many such courses that you can take online and at your own convenience. If you are an agency nurse already sometimes you can pick up this type of work if your agency is contacted to provide a task nurse in your area, you might let your employer know that you are interested in this type of assignment so that they will know should the opportunity arise.
As an RN, you can work your way into this very lucrative career that will allow you to be your own boss and control every aspect of what you do on a day to day basis. Just a word to the wise, it's not easy, depending on how many cases you work at one time, you can find yourself scrambling to get your work completed in a timely manner and days when you are gone from morning til night. But unlike working for someone else, you are in control and you can choose to take on fewer cases to give yourself more flex time and take on more when you want to make some extra money for whatever reason. The key factor here is YOU ARE IN CONTROL, and there is nothing like it, once you do it, you'll never want to work for anyone else again. Best of luck to you and your bright future as an Independent Contract Nurse.
