Honoring Corrections Nurses During Nurses week

Nurses week is a time to honor the great nurses who work long hours doing a thankless job. Nurses often sacrifice their own time and health working diligently to help others. Nurses often do not receive the respect they deserve, and this is never more true than in corrections nursing.

About Corrections Nurses

A prison is a functional mini-community with a fully functional medical unit. Correctional Nurses provide health care services which range from inpatient and outpatient medical assessment and treatment to emergency medicine.

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Risks and Danger of Correctional Nursing

Working in a prison is dangerous, but nurses face specific risks. First, while other staff enter with handcuffs, pepper spray, assorted protective gear and training, medical staff walk into the institution with a stethoscope. Nurses work closely with offenders in the prison population and rely heavily on the custody staff in America's understaffed prison systems for their safety. While, Corrections Officers are there to provide security for the medical staff, nurses have to be able to take care of themselves. They have to be strong physically and mentally to thrive in the prison setting. These are medical professionals who deal with a populace unlike any other and must be on their toes at all times, always prepared for the unexpected.

Reality of Corrections Nursing Versus perception

Much as Corrections Officers do not receive the respect they should for the work they do, Corrections nurses don't get the same credit as others in the medical field. "Just a prison nurse" is a phrase sometimes uttered in reference to LPNs and RNs working inside Correctional Facilities. It's as if the public believes that a prison nurse is not a real nurse. Some people promote the false idea that these nurses work in a prison because they can't work anywhere else. Nurses with years of experience in Corrections are turned down for jobs in hospital emergency departments because they "lack experience." There is a stigma involved with all Corrections work "COs aren't good enough to be real cops. Correctional nurses aren't good enough to be real nurses." The fact is, however, that Correctional Nursing requires a certain skill set and the ability to adapt and work in situations and environments that would be very challenging for most.

Working as a Corrections nurse is a lot like working in a hospital emergency department with additional challenges. like working in the ER, you deal with non emergency "emergencies" and hypochondria on a steady basis along with sporadic influx of trauma and legitimate emergencies. The prison population is no different from any other in terms of potential health issues. Being an inmate does not prevent a person from having a heart attack or getting cancer. Nurses in our prison system are trained to provide professional medical care to patients, and regardless of how the public sees this population, medical staff must treat everyone as a patient not an offender. How many of us could say that we could go to work everyday and provide medication, health care and life saving treatment to people who threaten, verbally abuse and sometimes assault us? These nurses not only provide professional medical care, but they do it in an environment that most people wouldn't step into willingly and for a client base which is often unappreciative and sometimes abusive.


Why Should we Care About Corrections Nurses?

Corrections nursing is a thankless job. Like everything else in a prison, it is behind a wall, hidden from society. People feel like if they don't see it, it doesn't matter. However, this is exactly why it does matter. Most people don't see what corrections staff do because most people can't do it. Every person in an institution plays a role in public safety. Medical is often ignored for their part in this. Consider that historically, one of the biggest reasons given for prison riots was a lack of adequate healthcare. Decent healthcare is one component of keeping a society from falling into chaos. Without Medical, prisons would see more violence and more deadly results from it. Also, Correctional Nurses can play a role in rehabilitation. While prisons are filled with manipulators and sociopaths who will never change, there are also those who need a spark to motivate them for self improvement. When someone who has been conditioned to think of themselves as worthless encounters compassion for the first time, you see that 30 seconds of caring holds the potential to change a life. The fact is that nurses week is about showing that we care about those who make a career of caring for others, and Corrections nurses do this in a place where it's hard to care. Corrections Nurses walk into a world of ugliness and hate with compassion and a mission to provide care above all else. Regardless of how we feel about the prison system or those who reside within the walls, we have to acknowledge and respect the service of those who walk willingly through the doors to do a needed and often thankless job. If you are a Corrections Nurse, thank you for what you do.

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