[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uu7hxf9h5Xk]
This video is a realistic presentation of nursing practice in a prison setting. Correctional health care is a nurse-run system. Much of the medical interventions and prescribing are done by nurse practitioners. Individuals in the corrections system have lived hard lives and can appear 10 years older than their chronologic age. Up to 40% can have Hepatitis C due to drug use.
Nurses in this video explain some of their personal safety habits like being next to the door in exam rooms and leaving a room at any sign of escalation.
Nurses also mention the tension that can sometimes develop in relationships with custody officers who can think that the standard care provided by nurses to inmates is ‘being too nice”.
Finally, the video presents a positive nursing perspective toward the inmates when one of the nurses explains that she does not like to know what the convictions are for her patients. She likes to treat them as anyone who might come to a private practice.
Watch this 10 minute video clip of a Discovery program and let me know what you think in the comments section of this post.
Cartoon Character says
when i worked in corrections, our facility was more than 50% Hep C. We tried to improve their health because eventually they might end up in society – and in order to be safe for society – they needed to be healthy.
We were never told of what the offense was, but sometimes the corrections officers would let it slip. Or you knew from the public nature of the crime. We knew, because of the facility I worked at that the prisoners were all either sex offenders and/or pedophiles. I still treated them no different than I treated my post partum moms and babes…..