Topic: Health & Wellness / Should HIV testing be mandatory at intake?

I think honestly that testing for ALL communicable diseases should be mandatory at the time of physical assessment for ALL inmates. The NCCHC guidelines state that a facility has 14 days in which to do a history and physical on all inmates detainedat a facility. It has been my experience that many inmates are poor historians and don’t know their health status. While HIPPA says health information can only be shared on a need to know basis, all correction personnel need to treat all inmates as though they have a communicable disease, by doing so they protect themselves from unnecessary contact with inmates that may have a communicable illness.

Topic: Health & Wellness / HepC Pos. Inmates in kitchen?

CDC’s recommendations for prevention and control of the Hepatitis C virus infection state that people should not be excluded from work, school, play, child care, or other settings because they have Hepatitis C. There is no evidence that people can get Hepatitis C from food handlers, teachers, or other service providers without blood-to-blood contact.

Doesn’t mean that I necessarily want a known infected person handliing my food, but in reality, do you really know who is preparing any food you eat unless you grow it, cook it and serve it yourself?

Topic: Health & Wellness / Medication administration in small jails

Wow, I’ve been a nurse for a mighty long time and I am amazed that there are still jails where CO’s pass meds. I run a medical unit in a 255 bed facility and I shudder to think of most of my CO’s having to make a determination about a medication or an illness. My hat is off to you guys.

Topic: Everything Education / New Officer

Welcome to corrections. You’ll either love it or hate it. Remember if you don’t embrace the sanctity of the job, you’ll find youself doing what the knuckleheads you spoke of do……….being a con in a uniform.
Good luck.

Topic: A Broader View / Employment in Corrections...

I read this thread with great interest as I often meet with nurses who have never done correctional nursing but express an interest in trying it. We aren’t corrections officers in most states and know very little in general about the law, but we deal mostly with the psychological repercussions of incarceration. It does change you, working day in and day out with this population. I have seen officers and nurses show who they really are on the outside by committing offenses like bringing in contraband either for love or money. It’s so easy to cross lines and do things that aren’t right and so terribly hard at times to uphold what you know to be right. Know that a lot of the men and or women who are housed in the facility are not much older than you but have lived hard and sometimes dangerous lives. Whatever your decision, I wihs you well.

Topic: Health & Wellness / Correctional Staff and Their Unwillingness to Learn Defensive Tactics.

As a contracted professional working in the jail setting, I often think about how unwilling my staff is to take time to update information about safety in the correctional setting. I can’t speak for officers but I can speak for a number of contracted persons in corrections. I have worked at a couple of correctional facilities and whether the facility offered any sort of course for self defense in an emergency or not, the problem was my nursing staff. They make every excuse not to attend. I can make it mandatory and still have difficulty getting staff to attend. The nurses seem to know that there aren’t a great deal of nurses who know about correctional nursing or that many that want to get into corrections so they feel that they won’t loose their job if they don’t.

Topic: Health & Wellness / Washing your hands

The inmates and there cells aren’t the only places where germs dwell. Much too often there are bacterial breeding grounds in the general environment because of funding shortages to maintain buildings properly unitl problems pop up. Not letting small anitation issues become big ones is the best method of preventing health problems.

Topic: The Club House / The Concerns of Inmates

Canus, you hit the nail on the head. One can discipline without losing dignity. You can lay a man out without ever uttering an F bomb. However, unfortunately most of these kids today only understand gutterspeak. When I look at the grievences and medical requests, the spelling is so God awful it is an emabarrassment that some of these kids claim to have completed any sort of education at all.

Topic: The Club House / The Concerns of Inmates

We have been getting more and more youthful offenders at the jail I work at and it is extrememly difficult. Most of the kids here have parents that are as bad or worse than the kids themselves. I find it amazing when a parent who’s kid has been in trouble since he was in diapers still believes everything the kid says. “Mom, they treat me so bad”, Mom, I’m starving to death and they don’t feed us enough food", “Mom, the nurse won’t give me any medicine”. I could go ono for days. Most of these inmates don’t take medicine as they should on the outside but want miracle pills while they are in here. I think the fault lies with kids having kids and not knowing how to set boundaries. Just my two cents.

Topic: Security Central / Contraband Bust

Thanks everyone for your kind words. I got into corrections because my son got himself in trouble and I knew nothing about how corrections worked. I only knew what I saw on television and knew that there had to be good people in jails and prisons who would look after my child despite the fact that he was an inmate. I believed then and still believe that sometimes good people do bad things and they should pay for their crimes. It doesn’t mean that they can’t change. I hoped that going to prison would make the difference in my son’s view of the world. I can honestly say that Michael did tell me stories of things he did learn about finding himself and learning things about being a man that he gleaned from having talks with some really wise C.O.‘s. I don’t know who they were but I thank them from my heart. Being in this job, I know that to be true.
The three punks involved in killing my son were such sad little boys, aged 19, 22, and 25, that I couldn’t even be mad at them. I was and still am sad for their families. Unfortunately, the families of the victims as well as the convict pay in one way or another.

Topic: Security Central / Contraband Bust

@ Irish Assassin: Great point. being the mother of a murdered child myself, it irks the hell out of me when I hear these inmates complain and their families call with crap about what they don’t have or how awful the jail is. Hell, my tax dollars help keep the three dirtbags that killed him in a place that’s at least safe, warm, and with three meals and almost better medical care than my $600 a month insurance will cover!!!!

Topic: Security Central / too many new officer

It’s funny, corrections is an area that very few nurses ever think about when they go into the field. It’s like it’s a secret. Then again, I don’t hear a lot of folks say " I want to be a corrections officer". They’ll say they want to be a cop or a highway patrol officer but hardly do you hear people say they want to be a correctional officer. You are right though, communication absolutely is everything. I stress this to inmate, officer, nurse, whomever. If you don’t tell me what I need to know in order to help you, I can’t help you. If you tell me half of the truth, don’t expect an accurate response from me. I live my by the motto, “pick your battles carefully so that you can fight another day”. I will never fight with an inmate or an officer unless it’s a life or death situation.

Topic: Security Central / too many new officer

I just terminated someone for calling in sick all the time. She said “you can’t fire me because I’m sick! I bring a doctor’s note all the time.” Well for me the problem is that you never work when anyone else is ill or has a need, you never do anything extra, you barely do your job, you work three 12 hour shifts a week and I allow you to schedule your time so that it works with your family life and you JUST HAPPEN to always get sick before or after you’ve had 3 or 4 days off! I can’t run my jail that way, sorry.

Topic: The Club House / Send us your mentally ill...

I do that too. We also have a similar system. It still needs the kinks worked out of it but it works over all. Most things are not an emergency and can be treated by the nurse. We have clinical pathways that direct the nurse in appropriate treatment. The problem is the officers get kind of wrapped up in the inmate issues and often call medical for irrelevant things……………………..

Topic: The Club House / I'm Here for the Money..

DT, you belong to a brotherhood. Civilians who have never thought about what it takes to be free or safe other than the fact that somebody else does all the dirty work, will indeed never understand what we go through to do our jobs. You do not only what they pay you to do, you do what you know to be right, moral and honest. You hit the nail on the head when you said time and circumstances do change ones perspective. I certainly know that when I got into nursing more than 30 years ago things were different. I had time to really help my patients, I was more than a pill pusher who never seems to make a patient happy. What I had to do was change my focus while being true to myself, my coworkers and my profession

Topic: The Club House / I'm Here for the Money..

amen to that and I’ll have to listen to that song

Topic: The Club House / Send us your mentally ill...

@jamestown- Love it!!!! Our doc will give an inmate darned nearly everything they ask for. I have to put my foot down and see most patients before he sees them so I can make an assessment of what’s going on. You are absolutely right about the young ones and the back problems and the scoliosis (crooked spines). They want medicine and they want double mattresses. When I got to the jail I am currently at, about a third of the inmates were on muscle relaxants and had double mattresses.The nurses didn’t like me, the inmates didn’t like me and the jail administrator thought I was a renegade. I am slowly earning the respect of my staff and the jail administration because I can back up most of what I do with data that I get out of medical journals and correctional journals. I have a bad back and I work 10-12 hours a day everyday and have to live with some discomfort, if I can, than they can too!

Topic: The Club House / I'm Here for the Money..

Nowadays morals, strong morals are hard to come by. Honesty and integrity should be a part of every individuals character but more so for those in the law enforcement field. I think you have to live the life you want to be remembered for long after your gone. Loved your post, commander.

Topic: The Club House / Send us your mentally ill...

I honestly think that is why some inmates wait until they come to jail to complain about things that have been wrong with them forever. They know that they can get their issues treated and not have to pay an astronomical amount for the care. I do everything in my power not to have to send an inmate to the hospital because I hate getting a $2000+ bill for unnecessary treatment. Every headache does not need an MRI but if you come to the ER for treatment of a headache they have to rule out a bleed in the brain with an MRI. We have become so lawsuit happy in this country that any doctor is terrified of being sued and will do ANYTHING to keep from being sued like ordering tests that he suspects strongly will come back negative. We sent an inmate who was behaving bizarrely to the ER and the bill I got back was almost $5000 for CT of head, labs, ER wait time, radiologist bill and ER doctor fees. They gave him some oral potassium because his labs showed he needed some and gave him nothing for the psychotic episode! Go figure!

Topic: The Club House / I'm Here for the Money..

@DT, just remember that you are not alone. There are others who feel as you do and who get stressed too. What you are is an unsung hero. No one thinks about correctional officers or anyone who works in jails/prisons when they think of heroes. People always think of policemen and firemen. We’re doing a vital job and we have to remember that we ARE vital to keeping society safe. Keep doing the best job you can so that at the end of the day you can look yourself in the mirror proudly and honestly and know that you did your best to make a difference.

Topic: The Club House / Send us your mentally ill...

I find it so odd that some states charge for certain things and some don’t. When I worked in Virginia, the jail there charged a $10 booking fee for the privilege of coming to jail!

Topic: The Club House / Send us your mentally ill...

Wow, $20!!! Our inmates complain about paying $5 to see the doctor or the dentist. I like the way your facility thinks!!!! Wish I could get that here.

Topic: The Club House / I'm Here for the Money..

The “i’m here for the money” attitude happens in every field. I’ve been in the medical field for more than 30 years and I can’t tell you how hard it has been for me to keep doing what I love when I hear the constant whining of “how hard things are”, “why should I work harder, no one cares anyway”. I am currently a team administrator in a county detention center and watch C.O.‘s with inmates and find it hard to tell who I can trust to help me understand what an inmate needs medically. I’m not meaning that they are to diagnose any problems, but they can tell me when an inmate acts unusual so that I can make a clear diagnosis for treatment.. Some of my nurses come with the attitude that whatever they do it doesn’t matter because “after all they’re only inmates”. I work hard every day to remind my staff and any correctional staff that every inmate could be one of our own family members and remind them to think about how they would want their family members treated. I know that I’m not it for the money, I took almost a 50% paycut to do something I love.

Topic: The Club House / Send us your mentally ill...

We aren’t fortunate enough to actually have a psychiatrist that is willing to work with the nursing staff at my facility. The doc that we have has her staff come in when they can to give injections to willing inmates. She continues to agree that we must send the inmate to the emergency room for treatment. Our medical director really does not want to take on any more responsibility than is necessary and I can’t blame him in many ways. However, I think when one looks at the cost of transporting an inmate to the hospital and the labs and tests that are done, the cost is almost prohibitive. Healthcare in general is in such a state of chaos that getting the kind of care that these inmates need is difficult at best.

Topic: The Club House / Send us your mentally ill...

You are very fortunate to have such a policy and a psychiatrist willing to stand by her beliefs as a practitioner. When I worked at another facility in another state, we had a SERT team that would accompany the nurse to medicate inmates whose behavior warranted further intervention. She would give them a shot of Ativan or Haldol ordered by the physician while the SERT officers held the inmate down. It worked!!!
I don’t have that luxury where I am now. I have to send the inmate to the emergency room where they do a “million dollar work up” which ends up costing me thousands of dollars and all I really needed was an $50 injection of Haldol or Ativan. Oh well……….