Patient advocacy issues facing RNs in California

The article continues in the November 2005 issue. Can you keep us posted when that is available?

Be that as it may -- Warren Beatty is not going to get any applause and/or political support from moi.

I live in Illinois and work in an ER where the county jail and juvenile detention center send their inmates. The juvie facility has a nurse only intermittently and one of their frequent visitors is a teen who is an insulin-dependent diabetic. When he gets hypo or hyperglycemic, they bring him in to the ER and then he goes right back out there! They do not do accu-checks and if his family can't or won't bring his insulin, he has nothing!

Space Nurse: I didn't mean to suggest that you take the opinion of a celebrity more seriously than that of anybody else. I just get tired of nursing organizations espousing liberal causes and views.

As for diabetic inmates, I used to get all worked up about deficiencies in their care. Then I realized they don't take care of themselves on the street and are probably getting more medical attention in jail or prison than they would otherwise. Of course, that does not excuse a facility from providing adequate and appropriate resources to inmates.

I work in a regional jail on the East Coast and I feel like the Standard of Care received by the inmates here is adequate, if not superior to that of some law-abiding citizens. One must take into consideration that the inmates pay $0 for their healthcare in most facilities. You must realize that we, as taxpayers, pay for our own healthcare and theirs. Now, I am certainly not going to say what goes on in the California prison system, as was mentioned in the article, but here, where I live, inmates are receiving care and have unrestricted access to medical care. Security does take precedence over healthcare in the correctional setting. IT HAS TO! These inmates are incarcerated for a reason. The public must realize that without security staff providing the services they do, these people would be out on the street committing more crime. You can't have it both ways. No one is saying that criminals are not entitled to health care and in cases where it is proven that malpractice or negligence was committed, then yes, by all means, someone should pay the piper, but I question the validity of these cases of neglect and denial of healthcare that are reported by the inmates...are these things validated before an article like this comes out? I mean if I had a dollar for every unfounded grievance that has been filed at the jail I am at, I wouldn't have to work there! These articles need to be taken with a grain of salt. Let the reader beware.