Measurement in Correctional Health Research: Unique Challenges and Strategies for Enhanced Rigor.

It is essential to identify valid and reliable measurement strategies to enhance accurate, comprehensive, and meaningful health assessment and evaluation to improve health outcomes among justice-involved and incarcerated populations. This article identifies and describes three primary challenges related to measurement in correctional health care and makes four recommendations for enhanced measurement rigor from a social justice perspective. First, incorporate incarcerated persons into the measurement research process; second, enhance psychometric investigation in correctional health settings; third, increase the collection of individual-level, health-related data from incarcerated populations; and fourth, create and maintain centralized databases and comprehensive codebooks to promote data sharing.

A Retrospective Analysis of Nursing Students' Clinical Experience in an All-Male Maximum Security Prison.

Prisons provide an ideal learning experience to prepare prelicensure students with the knowledge and skill set needed for practice in the 21st century. Beginning descriptive evidence demonstrates that correctional health is an innovative community resource to educate nursing students in today's changing model of health care delivery and practice. This article shares results from a retrospective analysis of the perceptions and experiences of nursing students during their community clinical rotation in an all-male maximum security prison.

Integrating Correctional and Community Health Care: An Innovative Approach for Clinical Learning in a Baccalaureate Nursing Program.

Problem: With an evolving focus on primary, community-based, and patient-centered care rather than acute, hospital-centric, disease-focused care, and recognition of the importance of coordinating care and managing transitions across providers and settings of care, registered nurses need to be prepared from a different and broader knowledge base and skills set. A culture change among nurse educators and administrators and in nursing education is needed to prepare competent registered nurses capable of practicing from a health promotion, disease prevention, community- and population-focused construct in caring for a population of patients who are presenting health problems and conditions that persist across decades and/or lifetimes. While healthcare delivery is moving from the hospital to ambulatory and community settings, community-based educational opportunities for nursing students are shrinking due to a variety of reasons, including but not limited to increased regulatory requirements, the presence of competing numbers of nursing schools and their increased enrollment of students, and decreasing availability of community resources capable and willing to precept students in an all-day interactive learning environment.