Sleep Aids

[OfficerRNBSN]

As a practice, do inmates at your facilities receive sleep aids? Are they prescribed?

At my facility, we do not issue controlled substances to inmates and are considering the cessation of anything given out to aid in rest or sleep such as trazodone, doxepin, hydroxyzine pamoate, etc. Obviously, we don't allow Ambien, Restoril, etc.

[VA_Shawn, LPN]

Patients at the facility I work at do not receive sleep aids. They are however prescribed narcotics occasionally. Most of the narcotics are prescribed for withdrawal protocols. I work for Correctional Health Services, it is a department of Maricopa County, in Arizona. It is separate from the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office which runs the jail system.

[BrandonLPN, LPN]

Don't forget that "e" in aides.Otherwise the meaning is a bit different.

[Orca, ADN, ASN, RN]

Our official policy is not to medicate for sleep. That said, I know for a fact that one of our posychiatrists is passing out trazodone, diphenydramine, Vistaril and Remeron as sleep aids. It has been an ongoing battle to get him to stop.

[JailNurse71]

Our psychiatrist prescribes the same even though we repeatedly tell the inmates we don't treat with sleep aides. When they come to the clinic complaining of depression and insomnia, the vast majority have learned the trick and they really want the sleep aide that's prescribed for them at pm and they refuse or hoard the antidepressant on medpass. While we have discussed this before if someone is truely depressed and unable to sleep if the depression is treated, ultimately the insomnia will be treated as well.

[OrganizedChaos, LVN]

I have worked in many different facilities & most of the time they don't. The inmates then wisen up & claim they have allergies to get Benadryl.

[Ashley02]

We did not Rx sleep medications. That said, a lot of our offenders (in a population if approximately 3300) were on narcotics, Neurontin, Pamelor/Elavil, Remeron, Wellbutrin, Tegretol in the PM.