packer/body-stuffer, riots and upsrisings, which call for urgent health actions, planned and decisive where active communication between surveillance and healthcare teams is needed1 . Providing assistance to patients deprived of their liberty, who suffer from communicable diseases, mental disorders, disabilities, drug abuse and borderline situations is an activity which calls for a series of knowledges, skills and procedures included in everyday’s routine of correctional nurses. Clearly nursing assistance in correctional facilities includes a wide range of pathologies, wider than that of primary healthcare. Thus, professionals developing their tasks in this context must have the appropriate knowledge on primary healthcare65 (chronic diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, coronary heart disease, heart failure and pulmonary disease) and further need to be trained in the appropriate knowledge, tools and resources to do so in a singular setting1 . Although the university degree in nursing does not include the areas needed for correctional nursing1 it is worth noting that several authors agree that correctional nursing faces a series of challenges that do not benefit from a specific training in conflict, legal system terminology and criminogenic factors66 all of which are specially relevant in this context. Nursing is based on the aim to negotiate the frontiers between the cultures of custody and care. This attitude implies complexe challenges and a series of limitations regarding the patient-nurse relationship67. Several authors12, 68 describe how providing care in correctional facilities requires specific knowledges, skills and experience. 48 Rev Esp Sanid Penit 2016; 18: 110-118 M Sánchez-Roig, A Coll-Cámara Prison nursing and its training — 115 — Coll1 describes how there is no country that includes specific contents for correctional nurses in the training of general nurses and how there is only specifically regulated trining for correctional nurses only in two countries: USA and Spain. The American NCCHC issues since 1991 the Certified Correctional Healt Professional Registered Nurse (CCHP-RN). This broadens and looks into the areas and knowledges needed for nurses to be able to face the challenges of correctional healthcare. In Spain, the Facultat de Ciències de la Salut Blanquerna – Universitat Ramon Llull offers a qualification “University Expert in Correctional Nursing” since 2013. This aims at preparing nurses to provide comprehensive care to inmates and acquire the skills to detect, plan, intervene and assess the health needs of inmates in the following areas: mental health, communicable diseases, drug abuse, borderline situation, multiculturalism, correctional context, regulations and law. In other countries such as the United Kingdom, France or Canada, nurses who want to develop their tasks in prisons need to be trained in Mental Health, like in the UK or Canada, or either receive a specific training like in France, where reference hospitals provide specific training to UCSA teams responsible of providing health care in correctional settings. UCSA are hospital functional units established in prisons and dependent clinics. The teams include general physicians, specialists, dentists, pharmacists, nurses, physiotherapists and administrative staff. The role of correctional nurses includes areas of: prevention, healing, health education and a relational dimension. The relational dimension is crucial and relevant in a context where people suffer from the prisonization syndrome. Reference hospitals are responsible for providing specific training for this kind of staff32. CONCLUSIONS Correctional nursing is a unique specialty29 which includes a wide spread of aspects regarding not only the dimension of health but also that regarding the correctional context, placing professionals between custody and care. Correctional nurses develop their tasks with patients in a state of utter helplessness, complex health problems and boderline situations1 , all of which takes place in a hostile setting under legal or regulatory influences and other circumstances which have an impact in the welfare of inmates: the correctional context and the deprivation of liberty. Several authors consider that the complexity of health among inmates calls for highly specialized nursing care1, 30, 31, 69. The aim should be a symbiosis of the person deprived of liberty and the healthcare provider, who should be able of revitalizing the profession by recalling which are its legitimate purposes and what habits need to be enhanced to achieve the first70. On the other hand, the skills of correctional nurses are nor acquired by simply studying the degree in Nursing since they are not included in its curriculum, thus a specifically designed training based on knowledges, skills and procedures in the areas of mental health, drug abuse, communicable diseases, primary healthcare, borderline situations, immigration and the phenomenon of the correctional context, including its regulation and law1 is needed. On the other hand, several authors agree that nurses should be included in healthcare teams to develop their professional skills regarding: education strategies to promote health and prevent diseases, treatment adherence and optimal therapeutic patient-provider relationship aimed at specific objectives in cases such as: infectious diseases (HIV50, TBC54, HBV61, HCV62, 63, mental