By Megen Duffy, BA, BSN, RN. Her blog is Not Nurse Ratched.

Michael Coghlan/Flickr

When I go to work, I go through a metal detector (did you know Danskos contain metal?), and all my belongings are scanned or gone through. I check out keys and a radio, and then I go through a series of sally ports to get to the medical area. I count every needle and pair of scissors I use. I never see patients without an armed guard nearby, and a good portion of my patients are cuffed and shackled. I’m on camera from the second I get out of my car.

Welcome to prison, nursing style!

“Why?” people ask me. “Couldn’t you get another job? Aren’t you scared? Didn’t you like the ER?” I worked in critical care/emergency nursing for a long time, and yes, I did like it. I brought those skills with me to corrections, where they are a lock-and-key fit. A surprising number of corrections nurses are ex-ER nurses. The same personality types work well in both settings.

Corrections nursing involves phenomenal nursing autonomy and uses many of the skills I honed in the ER:

• quick triage
• multitasking
• sorting out who is lying from who is sick
• knowing which assessments are the most important for each situation

The atmosphere tends to be quirky to chaotic and requires imagination, flexibility, and an ability to […]