What is it like to be a nurse in a prison?

[MMurse]

Just curious, I may have a job lined up in a very large corrections facility, and was curious to know what nursing at a prison entails? Is it dangerous? Etc..

[Sue Barton fan]

I just started working correctional nursing in a facility with well over 2,000 inmates. Each nurse should "ideally" be assigned 6 pods, but often more pods are added when staffing is short. There is one medication pass per shift and some inmates always get the short end of the deal e.g. why should an inmate be taking Trazodone at 4 PM - I don't blame them when they refuse to take it that early. Since I am not regular staff, I can be assigned any level, so there is no chance to rotate which pod I start at 3:30 and very little chance to get to know the inmates. My main mantra is to make sure that I follow the 5 rights of medication administration, since we give out both stock medication and patient specific psychotropic medication. However, the psychotropic medications are not given as patient specific because we don't have carts large enough to contain all of those bubble packs. So, we use the correct label of the medication as our guide for correct drug, dose and route and their arm bands or a C.O. ID for right patient. It's an INSANE way to administer medication, usually to over 200 inmates per shift. I treat everyone with respect, including the C.O.'s, the inmates and my fellow nurses. The regular nurses can sometimes be a bit cross and there is the occasional attempt to bully me, but I just maintain a calm and professional demeanor and it seems to eventually win them over. It is one of the most interesting jobs I have ever done and I do not feel unsafe at all. However, as others have mentioned, I maintain my guard at all times and I look to the C.O.'s when anything goes wrong. I am curious to know how other nurses manage those medication passes when you can not use the patient specific bubble packs.

[BlinkyPinky]

You sound like a quality person. Your post warned my heart.