A nurse practitioner's journey from emergency medicine to founding a legal consulting firm that helps attorneys uncover the hidden stories within medical records.
Influential Woman · Legal Nurse Consulting
Sabrina Ritchie
NP
Founder & Legal Nurse Consultant, TRACE Legal Nurse Consulting, PLLC
Charlotte, NC 28202
1Article published
Her Story
About Sabrina
Every medical chart tells a story, and most people only read half of it.
Sabrina Ritchie, AGNP-BC, PMHNP-BC, learned to read the rest from the ground up. She started in 2007 as an EMT, then climbed every rung of nursing: LPN, RN, and nurse practitioner, eventually earning dual board certification in adult-gerontology and psychiatric-mental health. She has practiced from the ICU to the psychiatric office, and in 2023 she built her own integrative psychiatric practice.
Today she brings that bedside experience to TRACE Legal Nurse Consulting, PLLC. She works with plaintiff attorneys on cases involving behavioral health and long-term care, as well as substance use, hospital medicine, critical care, and custodial care, the kinds of records where a patient's story is easiest to lose. Few legal nurse consultants hold board certification in both adult-gerontology and psychiatric care, and that combination lets her read these records the way a provider would. Her job is to find what the chart shows, what it leaves out, and what an attorney needs to know before deciding whether to take a case.
She is the author of Restoring Calm and lives in North Carolina with her husband and three children.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Sabrina
01What do you attribute your success to?
Persistence, and a refusal to stop learning. I started as an EMT and earned every credential one step at a time, often while working and raising a family. Every setting I worked in, from critical care to psychiatry, added another lens for reading a patient's story. When I started building businesses, I kept learning the same way, from people who had already built what I was trying to build and from experts who knew more than I did. TRACE is where all of those lenses come together.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
"Do it scared." For a long time I waited until I felt ready, trying to perfect everything before I made a move. But once I finally took the leap, I ended up changing the very things I thought I'd perfected. That taught me the second half of the lesson: don't be afraid to change your mind. Learning as you go and knowing when to pivot aren't signs you got it wrong. They're part of the process. My career is proof of that.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Don't rush past the bedside. The years you spend in direct patient care are what give your work credibility later, whether you stay clinical or move into something like legal nurse consulting. And don't be afraid of being told no. You'll hear it from employers, from clients, and sometimes from people close to you. When you share your goals, not everyone will see them the way you do, and that's okay. Don't let someone else's opinion decide what you or your goals are worth. Find a mentor who has walked the path before you, and keep going.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
The biggest challenge is that many attorneys don't know what a legal nurse consultant does until they're already deep into a case. By then, a strong case may have been declined, or a weak one pursued, because no one with clinical training looked at the records early. Records have also gotten harder to read. Electronic health records produce thousands of pages, and much of what matters, like timing, audit trails, and what wasn't documented are easy to miss.
That's also the opportunity. When a clinician reviews the record at the start, attorneys can make better decisions faster. I see the biggest need in behavioral health and long-term care, where records are especially complex and patients' stories are easiest to lose.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
The values that guide me are integrity, advocacy, and growth, and they shape both my work and my home. In my work, integrity means telling an attorney what the record truly shows, even when it isn't what they hoped to hear, and advocacy means making sure a patient's story is seen and told accurately, which is what drew me to nursing in the first place. At home, those values look like being present for my family, giving my children every opportunity to grow, and growing right alongside them. Building TRACE has allowed me to honor both, doing meaningful work while still being there for the moments that matter most.
Her Content Hub
Articles by Sabrina
Every Chart Tells a Story
From EMT to Nurse Practitioner: How Clinical Experience Became the Foundation for Legal Consulting
Every medical chart tells a story, and most people only read half of it.
I learned that from the ground up. I started in 2007 as an EMT, then worked my way through nursing: LPN, RN, and eventually nurse practitioner, with board certifications in adult-gerontology and psychiatric-mental health. Along the way, I worked in critical care, hospital medicine, long-term care, long-term acute care, and addiction medicine, and in 2023, I opened my own integrative psychiatric practice.
In each of those roles, I documented patient care. That experience taught me something most people outside healthcare never see: The chart is not a perfect record of everything that happened. It's a record of what was written down.
What the Chart Doesn't Say
When people picture a medical record, they imagine a complete, objective account. In reality, much of what matters lives in details that are easy to miss:
- Timing: When was a change in condition first noticed, and when was something done about it?
- Gaps: What should have been documented but wasn't?
- Patterns: Is the same note carried forward day after day, even as the patient changes?
- Context: Does the record reflect the kind of care this patient actually needed?
For attorneys representing patients and families, these details can shape whether a case moves forward. But not every attorney has someone with clinical training reviewing the records early, before decisions are made.
Why I Built TRACE
That's why I founded TRACE Legal Nurse Consulting. I work with plaintiff attorneys on cases involving behavioral health and long-term care, as well as substance use, hospital medicine, and custodial care. These are the kinds of records where a patient's story is easiest to lose.
My job isn't to decide what a case is worth or who is at fault. That decision always belongs to the attorney. My job is to find what the chart shows, what it leaves out, and what the attorney needs to know before deciding whether to take a case.
Lessons That Apply Far Beyond Healthcare
Every role I've held became part of the foundation for this work. If you're considering a pivot in your own career, here's what I've learned:
- Your experience travels with you. The skills you build in one field can become your biggest advantage in the next.
- Don't wait to feel ready. I used to try to perfect everything before making a move. Once I finally took the leap, I ended up changing the very things I thought I'd perfected. Do it scared.
- Give yourself permission to pivot. Changing your mind isn't failure. Learning as you go and knowing when to change direction are part of the process.
- Learn from people further along. Seek out those who have built what you're trying to build, and listen.
Every career tells a story, too. Mine began in the back of an ambulance. Today, it's about making sure the stories inside medical records are seen and understood.
Sabrina Ritchie, AGNP-BC, PMHNP-BC, is the founder of TRACE Legal Nurse Consulting, PLLC. Learn more at tracelnc.com.
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