[98.6]

My Father is an M.D., and while living in San Francisco to "moonlight" he worked at Folsom.

They gave him a book which he has forwarded to me after he left the Cal.D.O.C. titled:

"Games Criminals Play: How you can profit by knowing them."
By Bud Allen, MSW (a former Cal.DOC Lt. w/ 27 years)
ISBN: 0-9605226-0-3

He has told me much of what has been posted already.

Nothing flashy. My Father always dressed "down" for a physician. But once he made an abcent mined mistake of wearing a really nice watch and one of his patients saw it and the news that the 'Doc' was wearing it spread like wild fire!

Just a P.S.- the information you recieved from your Brother-in-law who is a Police Officer may be limited. ONLY Correctional Officers spend protracted amounts of time with inmates and can really provide serious insight.

I have been told that it can be very rewarding work. My Father had the gentle influence to put the seed of interest in the heads of discharged inmates to see the value of healthcare as a career. Two of his former patients went out and became medical assistants. So remember you have an influence just beond providing pt. care, you can council as well.

Good Luck!

[RN702Nevada]

It's great you have lots of experience as a floor nurse because you need excellent assessment skills. The nurses I have seen have trouble in corrections, are those with limited physical assessment experience such as those coming out of an exclusively psych background. Your assessment skills are essential to walk the fine line between providing quality health care (very important, since you are the only access to health care these people have), and not being taken advantage of. I have seen nurses get fooled too much by fakers, and the prison staff lose respect for them and become uncooperative, which can make the job impossible. I have also seen nurses assume 'every' inmate is faking without the assessment to back it up, which leads to poor health care and liability. The faking can be pretty amazing: I've had a patient before who would sharpen a fingernail and pick his nose deeply with it, swallow the blood down the back of his throat until he had a belly full, and then make a big show of vomitting blood in front of the staff (all for the amusement of a ride to the hospital). More common stuff, especially in the booking area, is hyperventilating until unconscious or simply going limp and unresponsive (that's what ammonia inhalants are for). So, you have to have enough assessment confidence separate fact from fiction accurately.
Do not trust but respect: the USA incarcerates a relatively large percentage of their population for a variety of reasons. They are not all scum and should not be condescended to or treated badly. If you cannot maintain you 'unconditional positive regard' for patients in this setting, do them a favor and get a job elsewhere. It would certainly be scary to be required to entrust your healthcare exclusively to a prison healthcare outfit, so some of the attitude you might get at 1st is understandable. If you show yourself to be competent (NOT generous, just competent), you will wind up having a good rep with the inmates and hence a good working relationship. Get too generous or friendly, and the requests will never end.
Call the custody staff 'Officer', not 'Guard'. Same as inmates, you need to walk a line with them between cooperating with them but not allowing yourself to get pushed around. Appear to defer to them and respect them, be friendly when appropriate, and don't get a rep with them for being too soft on inmates. But certain ones won't want to be bothered to do their job when it comes to the nurses, and will try to intimidate you out of seeing patients. Be assertive, never passive or nasty/aggressive.
In other words, Officers or Inmates: you won't be able to do your job if you are too nice OR to rude to either group. And if you ever catch yourself thinking romantically about anyone from either group, hit yourself over the head with a two-by-four a few times.