I Need Your Help

Greetings. I need your help. This is the first in a series of questions I am posting for your assistance and imput. Your contribution is invaluable and greatly appreciated! Please list all the departments you work in in your correctional setting. For example, here is a list of the areas I worked in corrections:

Sick line

Infirmary (which included an observation area for suicidal inmates)

Treatments

RHU (The Hole- or the maximum security area)

The ranges

Pharmacy

Inmate/Personnel Education

If there are other areas that you work inside your facility, please give me a brief description of the area.

Again, I appreciate your assistance in this project. You can EM the info to me at [email protected].

PS: FORGET HE POLL . . .it's too ambiguous as presented. I'm learning . . .

[sjoe]

This poll needs to be redesigned. I worked in ALL of those areas except pharmacy, but the poll only allows me to select one of them.

[Orca, ADN, ASN, RN]

I agree with sjoe. My work assignment varies. Since I work nights, I don't work the clinics per se. I work the pharmacy and do pill call on the yard most of the time. However, I often work the infirmary, and at night, that means seeing inmates after hours in the clinic, taking gatekeeper calls from rural camps that do not have 24-hour medical staff (assessing over the phone can be fun, since you are usually talking to a correctional officer), and responding to "man down" calls on the yard. It can also involve running EKGs and doing trauma assessment and treatments. We also do not have separate staff for different areas of the prison. I go to the disciplinary and intake units as well a general population during pill call, and go to both if responding to an emergency. I do education all the time, as many inmates do not understand their medication and what it does.

The answer isn't quite as simple as the poll has made it out to be. You have split duties that I perform on a regular basis into separate choices.

[WRCRN]

The "other" area of corrections I work in is a medium security, all male, psychiatric treatment prison. We take care of all the medical and psychosocial needs of the inmates. The request to see Health serivces by way of submitting a written request. We then triage the complaints, see the men and either treat using Standing orders or refer to the physician. We also have 2 housing units (each house about 20 men) that have RN's assigned directly to the area. These units specialize in acute and moderately acute psychiatric conditions and thus we are able to assist the MD's in med adjustment by seeing immediate response to the psych. meds the men are on. I work on one of these specialized units. Currently, due to a 30% staff vacancy, instead of having 1 RN per Specialty unit, 1 of us have to cover both units and the other RN has to work out of the "core HSU". This core is responsible for the same things as described above but is responsible for 6 units of 22 men each. I hope this helps.