New Mexico School Nurse Association Annual Conference

Seeing those initials after my name is something I never would have imagined as a 15-year-old picking up the pieces after my mother passed away. My Mom was in a car accident one week before my oldest sister’s wedding. The rest, shall we say, is history, but not just any old story. The community hospital where my Mom was taken was near our house. I rode my bicycle to see her whenever I couldn’t get a ride from my father or grandmother as my next oldest sister had to go back to college. But what I remember the most clearly was how the nurses were so helpful to all of us. That, my friends, made a lasting impression upon this young, naïve, teenage girl. Me. I became a Registered Nurse. I went to the same university as my oldest sister, Vanderbilt University, in Nashville, TN where I got my Bachelor of Science in Nursing. After graduation, I worked in pediatric nursing and then psychiatric-mental health nursing. I completed my Master of Science in Nursing at Vanderbilt and then I taught pediatric nursing at Vanderbilt. It was then that I became interested in all things “legal”. I applied and was accepted to Vanderbilt University Law School where I met and married my husband, David. Thing is, he was a year ahead of me in school at Vanderbilt Law School, and he was going to work in his hometown of Memphis, TN. I secured a job at a law firm in Memphis, and after graduation I started handling medical malpractice cases and began paying off my student loan debt. The more medical malpractice cases I litigated, the more I saw a tremendous need for carefully prepared nurses to serve as nurse expert witnesses in cases. The nurse expert witness, also known as a legal nurse consultant, had beautiful nursing skills but needed to be properly trained in the law. This was the birth of JurexNurse.com.