Do you feel like you are working in another world when you enter your correctional facility? Then this episode is for you. Art Beeler, former Warden of the Federal Medical Center in Butner, NC, shares his unique perspective on good communication in corrections between officers and nurses. Art has some great advice for working with officers. As correctional nurses we are continually walking the balance between custody and caring to do our jobs.

Here are some key tips:

• Understand and acknowledge the different perspectives between security and health care. Everyone has a role to play in every situation.
• Good communication is role modeled from the top. First line managers, especially, must show respect and collaboration among the disciplines.
• Don’t dismiss officer health concerns of inmates. When an officer contacts health care staff about an inmate, even if the issue seems unfounded, the patient still warrants an evaluation.
• Courtesy and respect among the staff is important. The correctional environment, by its nature, can be negative.
• Don’t ignore name-calling or disrespectful communication. Address it directly when it happens.

In the Nursing News

Sounding the Alarm – Patient Safety and Quality Healthcare

Unattended alarms ranks as a top safety issues in acute care settings. An article in the online journal Patient Safety and Quality Healthcare outlines strategies to attend to healthcare alarms. Correctional healthcare may generally have less alarms, but those working in large infirmaries may find this article useful. A four tenet approach is advocated for tackling alarm issues.

• First, address the culture around the safety issue. An organization may find that over-riding alarms or ignoring them is condoned in the culture of a particular unit or the entire facility.
• Next deal with the infrastructure supporting the unsafe practice. This can include the layout of the unit or staffing patterns.
• The third tenet is to consider practices. Here is it best to engage front-line staff in developing a process for alarm notification, verification, and response. What alarms, for example, can be changed from the default to better meet the needs of an individual patient?
• The final tenet is technology. Questions to investigate in this area include whether staff are correctly using the monitor technology – both as intended and to the full extent.

These tenets are also helpful to guide improvement processes for other safety issues. Consider poor documentation of sick call visits. Using the four tenets, consider how the department culture is affecting this issue and what infrastructure could be implemented to support good documentation during sick call visits.  Involve the staff in providing information about practices that leads to a policy revision to support good practice, and then, see if there is any technology that could help capture sick call visits.

Antipsychotics: Adverse Events That Send Patients to the ED (requires free Medscape Account Login)

An editorial by Dr. Lee Hampton, a medical officer at the CDC, cites antipsychotics as having the highest emergency room visits for adverse effects of other primary categories of psychiatric medications. The antipsychotic drug class includes medication such as haloperidol (Haldol), quetiapine (Seroquel), and risperidone (Risperdal). A study using ER visits at 63 US hospitals over the course of three years found antipsychotic adverse events to be three times more common than anti-anxiety medication, four times more common than stimulants, and five times more common than antidepressants. Of course, the implications for correctional nurses are that patients will be initiating sick call visits for antipsychotic side effects, so it is important to be knowledgeable about how they present. The most common adverse effects noted in the study were movement disorders like trismus (jaw spasms), dystonias (sustained muscle contractions cause twisting and repetitive movements or abnormal postures), and extrapyramidal symptoms such as the lip smacking of tardive dyskinesia or the inability to initiate movement or remain motionless. Also, the atypical antipsychotics such as Seroquel and Risperdal can lead to hyperglycemia and new onset diabetes. Take into consideration the use of antipsychotic medication when evaluating your sick call patients. An appointment with a mental health provider for medication management may be in order.