Preparing nurses to work effectively in the prison environment

Nurses who go to work in prisons begin their new career without having had any specific preparation for this unique and diverse role. The demands placed upon nurses are unlike any they will have experienced in their previous clinical posts. The work of a nurse in prison contains elements of both mental health nursing and practice nursing. The context in which this nursing occurs means that the nurse is presented with complex clinical and professional dilemmas. Consequently, few nurses start to work within this specialty with all of the core competencies required to be clinically effective and confident in their role. This article describes how this unmet educational need was addressed by the development of a diploma level module.