Common Correctional Nursing Interview Questions

I'm collecting a compendium of Interview Questions and best answers for folks prepping for a correctional nursing job interviews. Could you chime in with yours even if you might have posted elsewhere on this forum? It would be good to have them all in one place for newbies searching this site.

Thanks for all the time and effort you spend helping new correctional nurses learn the ropes!

Great thread, thanks for all the help. I have an interview on Tuesday for a CA facility... i'll post afterwards.

I had hoped to be interviewing by now, the HR person said she thought it would be sometime the middle of June. Now she says she hasn't been given the ok to interview for this position yet??? Any thoughts?

Specializes in Acute Care Psych, DNP Student.

Here's a classic correctional nursing interview question:

Two inmates present at the same time. One says he has chest pain and the other says he's bleeding. Who do you see first? Why?

Specializes in Emergency Department.

I work in the largest State prison in our state (by population) - approx 5300 inmates at any given time. On weekends, it is just me and one other nurse until the pill pass nurses get to work around 11 am.

So with no other nurses and no doctors, I tend to phone triage a LOT!

With that said, if I had a call for both of the CP and bleeding inmates, before I had them in front of me, I would have a lot more information.

For example, does the CP inmate have a cardiac history? How long has he been having CPs? How old is he? Does he have a hx of anxiety? GERD? Etc.

The inmate that is C/O bleeding - where's he complaining that he's bleeding from? Rectal? Urinary?

Multicollinearity said:
Here's a classic correctional nursing interview question:

Two inmates present at the same time. One says he has chest pain and the other says he's bleeding. Who do you see first? Why?

I recently had an intervview for a nursing supervisor position at 2 correctional facilities... Although the postings said they would hire after the interview, I was asked to have a meeting with the Warden and another Nursing Coordinator now. Any thoughts? Is this a 2nd interview? I am awre that they did check references, so am hopeful, but wondering....!

Questions were all related to dealing with employee conflict issues, though there was a general one about suicidal inmates (psych 101 stuff) and a difficult charting scenario question. I will post it tomorrow. Thanks for all the help!

Specializes in Acute Care Psych, DNP Student.
ChuckeRN said:
I work in the largest State prison in our state (by population) - approx 5300 inmates at any given time. On weekends, it is just me and one other nurse until the pill pass nurses get to work around 11 am.

So with no other nurses and no doctors, I tend to phone triage a LOT!

With that said, if I had a call for both of the CP and bleeding inmates, before I had them in front of me, I would have a lot more information.

For example, does the CP inmate have a cardiac history? How long has he been having CPs? How old is he? Does he have a hx of anxiety? GERD? Etc.

The inmate that is C/O bleeding - where's he complaining that he's bleeding from? Rectal? Urinary?

For the purpose of this question you have no further information. You have to pick one to see first.

I would say the bleeding one, based upon where the bleeding is coming from.

Hi all!

I have an interview tomorrow for a job with an Oregon state prison. And while I know it is an older one, I am SOOOOO grateful for this thread!!! I've been using all of the questions on here to refresh from school and feel very confident about any questions they might ask tomorrow. So, in advance, THANK YOU!!!!!

Julz

Let us know how it goes, Julz!

Hey everyone!

So the interview went well. I won't know until the end of next week if I am selected to go through the second interview, but my fingers are crossed. The interview was set up as a scoring system with ten questions. Here's what I remember:

Why do you want to work in a prison?

What do you, as an individual, believe you can bring to our team of nurses?

How can you support the mission of the prison towards the inmates? (this one was kind of weird. I focused on the purpose of prison being reformation and rehabilitation)

There was one prioritization question with four different activities.

One HIPPA question

Where do you see yourself in five years?

Question on diabetes, insulin administration, and hypoglycemia.

Coworker constantly not doing their job properly, what would you do.... (obviously go to supervisor)

I don't remember the last two. All the questions were pretty standard stuff. Each question is scored on a scale of 1-5. People with the highest scores will move on to the second interviews.

I hope these help anyone else who is considering this career path!

This thread made me feel so prepared for my interview that I had this morning so I am extremely grateful. My interview turned out to be nothing like what this thread offered, though! Ha ha. They mostly asked me about my experiences and how I thought I could bring my skills into the correctional setting. I thought I did a horrible job since I was prepared for all situational questions and somehow blanked when it came to talking about myself HAHA. The nurse manager told me that I was the first interview, and that they had several other nurses to interview later in the week. A few hours later, they called to offer me the job!! I wonder what happened to the other interviewees. :unsure: I'm a new grad, too.

Thank you for this thread, though!!

Lorry.... I interview with federal prison as an RN. What should I expect? Most of these appear to be state level. Any experience with federal prison interview questions?

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