Diane Trace Warlick's Bio

Diane Warlick is a nurse attorney with more than 25 years experience in health and nursing law and many other aspects of law practice. She began her career as a pediatric nurse in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps, where she served three years active duty. Upon leaving the military practice setting, Ms. Warlick quickly learned that the many skills and independent judgment she was exercising as a military nurse were not useful in the civilian practice environment.

As a charge nurse in a pediatric hospital, legal and ethical issues constantly swirled around without resolution or nursing staff input. It was an orthopedic surgeon who ultimately steered her to law school, when he gave an order that was against written hospital regulations and threatened punitive measures if the order wasn’t followed. This began her search to make some sense of nursing and hospital law.

Soon after graduating from Boston University Law School, Ms. Warlick became a charter member and the second president of The American Association of Nurse Attorneys. She served as a member of the Board of Directors for more than 10 years. She has given numerous presentations and lectures to nurses, and written for professional journals and textbooks. She represented The American Association of Nurse Attorneys and the American Nurses Association as amicus curiae before the United States Supreme Court in the landmark case, Cruzan vs. State of Missouri, which addressed the difficult issues of patient self-determination and end-of-life decisionmaking.

In partnership with Tonia Dandry Aiken, RN, JD, a noted nurse attorney author and educator, she founded the Nurse Attorney Institute, LLC. The Institute is dedicated to bringing knowledge of the law to the nursing profession, fostering healthy working relationships between professional groups in health care facilities, and introducing facilitative leadership skills to conflict management. The Institute teaches experienced registered nurses to become legal nurse consultants, working at the interface of law and nursing, in collaboration with Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center School of Nursing. Ms. Warlick also practices law part-time in Dallas, Texas to keep her skills honed for the benefit of those she teaches and represents.