Supporting Prison Nurses: an Action Research Approach to Education

Since April 2006, commissioning responsibility for healthcare services in public prisons has been fully devolved to NHS primary care trusts (PCTs), with the expectation that offenders will have access to the same range and quality of health services available to the wider population. In order to support prison nurses in meeting this goal, a PCT and university established a partnership, which used an action research approach to develop, instigate and evaluate a bespoke educational programme for nurses working in two local prisons. This article outlines the processes involved in the design and implementation of the programme. It also reports on findings from pre- and post-intervention questionnaires and focus groups with course participants, and semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders, which suggest that the innovation had a positive impact on the nurses' confidence, assertiveness, clinical expertise and approach to change. The article concludes that the action research project should continue, but its scope should now broaden to address educational support for healthcare assistants, collaborative learning between prison officers and prison nurses, and the implementation of clinical supervision and action learning sets.