Newly qualified nurses in prison - where’s the support?

During nurse training, wellbeing, and resilience (that disliked word) are hugely spoken about topics and sharing your experiences with others is greatly encouraged to assist in maintaining these. When you’re at university, this is easily achieved – you catch up with your friends who are all in a similar situation on a regular basis and get to have your much needed vent or share in your wins. But what do you do when this option is taken away?

Moving into prison nursing is a whole other world of healthcare. We’re suddenly using jargon we never knew before – DPER’s (digital person escort records), code blues, 'sending them out', and receptions to name but a few. I’m suddenly in a position where my friends who work in other areas of nursing such as hospital and community can chat, sympathise and rejoice with each other easily, because they’re talking about things we’ve covered for the last three years and all know and understand. Whereas I feel in order to vent or rejoice, I need to give a full explanation first so it can be fully understood what I’m talking about, which can often feel overwhelming at the time or like it defeats the point.

An example of this, which led me to write this blog post, was my second non-supernumerary night shift. In short, I had multiple receptions to do on arrival, two patients I needed to 'send out', one of which was called as a code blue and about 25 DPER’s alongside my regular night duties to complete. All in all, I worked non-stop all night and only just finished everything in time for the end of my shift. This left me feeling super stressed at the end of my shift, and I just wanted to talk but found that when trying to talk about it, it all required an explanation as the things I have to do as a prison nurse are not something my friends are familiar with. This defeated the point for me and didn’t help me feel any less stressed.

So this leads to the question – what do we do about it?

My workplace has been fantastic in supporting me professionally – access to training, regular meetings with my preceptor and encouragement to keep developing, but this doesn’t remove the need and desire for support from those in the same boat as me. In a couple of months, I will start my preceptorship meetings with fellow newly qualified people, which I look forward to and think will help.

I think we need to make it more known that newly qualified nurses can work in prisons and integrate it into the university curriculum – something I have already begun to work on at my university, visiting for their careers fair.

Apart from that, I’d like to set up a NQN’s in prison network – if you’d like to get involved, let me know. Find me on Twitter: @MollyPayne7590

All in all – look out for your newly qualified friends, especially if they’re in an 'unusual' environment. We’re managing, but we still want your support.