Acute Care for Patients Who Are Incarcerated

Caring for Hospitalized Incarcerated Patients: Physician and Nurse Experience

“…Clinicians were unsure as to best practices regarding correctional officer presence, shackling during examination, and informed transitions of care-areas where guidelines are lacking and common practices do not always protect patient rights or align with medical or nursing society guidelines. 2 Nurse respondents were more likely than physicians to ask officers about safety risk of a patient and less likely to request officers leave the bedside during encounters. Higher perception of safety risk among nurses could be related to greater time spent on and proximity of care tasks.…”

“…Clinicians were unsure as to best practices regarding correctional officer presence, shackling during examination, and informed transitions of care—areas where guidelines are lacking and common practices do not always protect patient rights or align with medical or nursing society guidelines. 2 …”

“…There are 2.1 million incarcerated individuals in the USA, 1 yet established best practices for the care of hospitalized incarcerated individuals are lacking. 2 Given that people of color are overrepresented in jails and prisons, 3 improving care for this patient population can mitigate racial health disparities.…”

“…Limited evidence suggests hospitalized incarcerated patients face challenges to health privacy, comfort, and discharge planning. 2 These studies were confined to a small group of British physicians 4 or narrative descriptions of providers caring for incarcerated pregnant women. 5 , 6 We investigated providers’ knowledge, attitudes, and practices caring for hospitalized incarcerated individuals, with the goals of guiding education and standardizing institutional policy.…”

Shackling Ulcer: an Upper Extremity Ulcer Secondary to Handcuffs

“…4 While typical hospital restraint regulations mandate the least restrictive form that protects patient and staff safety, no such guidelines govern hospital shackling. 5 As shackles are placed for nonmedical reasons, treating clinicians should carefully examine incarcerated patients with wrist and hand symptoms, and request an alternate means of securing an incarcerated patient when medically necessary.…”