Seeing is believing: The effect of prison-based insight-days on student nurses’ perceptions of undertaking practice placements within a prison healthcare environment

• Published in: Nurse education in practice Vol. 45; p. 102795
• Main Authors: Hunt, E.L., Booth, N., Hunt, L.A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Scotland Elsevier Ltd 01-05-2020; Elsevier Limited
• Subjects: Attitude of Health Personnel; Clinical decision making; Clinical placements; College students; Correctional Institutions; Curiosity; Decision making; Education, Nursing, Baccalaureate; Employment; Environment; Ethics; Female; Health care access; Health Needs; Humans; Interviews; Learning environment; Mental Disorders; Negative Attitudes; Nurses; Nursing; Nursing education; Nursing Students; Opportunities; Perception; Phenomenology; Practice placements; Prison health services; Prisoners; Prisons; Qualitative Research; Recruitment; Researchers; Risk Assessment; Semi Structured Interviews; Social exclusion; Stereotypes; Students; Students, Nursing - psychology; Surveys and Questionnaires; Undergraduate Study; United Kingdom > UK; England; Nursing students; Clinical placements; Learning environment; Prison health services
• ISSN: 1471-5953; 1873-5223
• DOI: 10.1016/j.nepr.2020.102795

Prisoners' access to healthcare should mirror that of the general public, but is adversely affected by challenges in recruiting nurses to work in custodial settings, potentially impacting on prisoner well-being. To address this issue prison-based insight-days have been developed jointly by one university and prison to positively influence students’ views of undertaking placements in custodial settings because nurses are known to subsequently seek employment in areas where they have had positive student placements.
A phenomenological investigation explored student nurses' lived experiences of prison-based insight-days. Questionnaires and interviews were used to gather qualitative data about students’ feelings both prior to and following the insight-day (n = 17). All data was thematically analysed resulting in four themes: pre-placement curiosity, escalating admission anxiety, calming down inside and post-placement decision making.
The empirical findings showed that first-hand exposure to prisoners, and to the realities of a working prison, were crucial factors in dispelling stereotypes and addressing negative preconceptions of prison healthcare environments, as students could find prison placements unexpectedly appealing. Drawing on the findings, this paper recommends that facilitating prison insight-days within custodial settings may be one way to encourage students to undertake prison placements.
•Seeing prison environments for themselves improved students' insight.•Meeting prisoners has the most impact of the day in dispelling stereotypes.•Enhanced levels of safety and civility heightened the appeal of prison placements.•The opportunities to achieve nursing skills/competencies in prison must be emphasised.•Debriefing would help students to make sense of their prison insight experience.