Prison nursing and its training M Sánchez-Roig1 , A Coll-Cámara2 1 Quatre Camins Prison Primary Healthcare Team 2 Catalan Health Institute ABSTRACT The main task of nurses is to take care of sick and healthy people and evaluate changes in their health conditions. The goal is to take the appropriate measures to help their recovery or guarantee a dignified death, and if possible, help them regain autonomy and independence. Nursing is present in different areas: primary health, mental health, accident and emergencies, intensive and coronary care, surgical care, paediatrics, geriatrics, public health, occupational health, teaching, etc. In our case, prison nursing, one of the least known branches of the profession, we wanted to investigate more deeply the work of nurses in prisons, which aspect of health care they are responsible for and to what type of population they are geared towards, as well as the necessary training to be able to work in such a particular environment. To conclude, we have seen that university degrees in general nursing do not include knowledge in this area, and that authors from different countries support the specialization of prison nursing and the need for nurses to be trained according to the health conditions of inmates and the characteristics of prisons. Keywords: nursing; prisons; prisoners; education, continuing; competency-based education; nursing care; primary health care; mental health; substance-related disorders; communicable diseases; emergencies. Text received: 15/01/2016 Text accepted:06/02/2016 INTRODUCTION For many years prison health care has remained the great unknown within the public health system. In correctional facilities, staff was scarce and remained within the remit of minimum standards included in Prison Regulations (RP 190/1996): a physician with skills in psychiatry and a nurse, and resources were simply insufficient. In the 1980s, with the emergence of new pathologies, mainly as a consequence of injecting drug use: infection by human immunodeficiency virus (HIV/AIDS) or by Hepatitis B virus (HBV), the situation changed dramatically. In fact, prison health care stakeholders were concerned that infirmaries in prison would become real units for terminally ill patients. The need for providing care for a new type of patient entailed that medical and nursing staff became the key figures in keeping an optimum state of health among the imprisoned population. From this moment on, nursing staff began playing a new role, a substitution one. Later, when the first antiretroviral therapies arose and mainly in 1996 when the first protease inhibitors were launched, the management of HIV/AIDS infection underwent profound changes and since then the effectiveness of this treatment greatly depends on nurses’ communication and social skills to encourage patients’ adherence1 . Nowadays, the increase of mental pathologies2 and foreign population3 entails new challenges for nurses who need new knowledge and skills to provide health care with versatility and specificity1, 4. Moreover, it is worth noting that the role of prison nurses significantly differs from that of their external counterparts due to the special nature of the correctional environment mainly characterized by the deprivation of liberty of convicts and the legal influence within these facilities5 . On the other hand, prison health care entails a series of specific features which requires that nurses be specially trained in areas such as: infectious diseases, mental health, drug abuse, emergencies, primary health care, public health as well as regulatory and legal aspects1, 4. 44 Rev Esp Sanid Penit 2016; 18: 110-118 M Sánchez-Roig, A Coll-Cámara Prison nursing and its training — 111 — This article aims to bring readers closer to the culture of health care provided by prison nursing staff, the population targeted and the special nature of this environment as well as making them familiar with what type of training is required in such a particular context. The terms “convict” and “nurse” will be used indistinctly to refer to female and male individuals. BASIC CONDITIONING FACTORS Different authors describe how the imprisoned population gathers a series of conditioning factors of health which are clearly overrepresented in comparison with the general population6, 7 such as: drug abuse, infectious diseases (HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, hepatitis B and C, sexually transmitted infections), mental disorders and factors derived from extreme situations (self-harm, foreign body ingestion, body packer/ body stuffer, hunger strike, riots and uprisings, etc.) These factors do not differ between countries: both in Europe and America the same factors have been described as defining features of prison health care6, 8-13. Furthermore, there are other circumstances which have an influence on convicts’ welfare such as the correctional environment itself, deprivation of liberty and regulatory and legal influences. CORRECTIONAL CONTEXT The correctional context implies a space for communication, action and regulations which determine the relationships established between individuals who live (inmates) and cohabite (staff) within the