Jansen Llorico Main Post
Jansen Llorico Main Post
Co-production was originally coined in the late 1970s to designate a process in which contributions from individuals in different organizations are transformed into a singular good or service (Filipe et al., 2017). The correctional nurse treads between the correctional system’s policies and their personal values and proper judgment as a healthcare professional. For example, a patient who is segregated because of dangerous behavior complaining of chest pain requires immediate and face-to-face, full-body assessment by medical standards. However, corrections would oftentimes be apprehensive about letting the patient out of their cell or refuse to have them be assessed altogether when the patient starts to escalate in the name of staff safety. Even in these cases, however, compromise and co-production become the standard as the medical department works hand in hand with corrections to provide care management for the patient safely and securely. The biggest impact of competing needs in policymaking is that it considers every department’s need and a need for collaboration and compromise.
The COVID-19 pandemic was one instance of co-production of the correctional system and the medical department. The jail I am employed in currently houses 742 detainees (Miamivalleyjails.org, 2021). Of these individuals, medical has 25 people currently found to be COVID-19 positive. However, the jail only has one isolation room, and the COVID-19 population is a mix of women and men who could not be housed together. Therefore resulting in a dilemma of the need to adhere to isolation precautions to prevent the spread of infection as per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guideline (CDC, 2021) and the question of exactly where to house the COVID-19 population.
Medical and corrections worked hand in hand, dedicating a correction “classification” staff and a medical COVID-19 staff to sort through patients and whether they required self-isolation. Inmates were rehoused with smaller pods dedicated to COVID-19 patients enabling corrections to house more patients in bigger pods. Medical also ensures timely assessment of the isolated patient to ensure they are removed from isolation as soon as appropriate to decrease the correctional department’s burden. Undeniably, the burden of COVID-19 on corrections and correctional nursing is still ongoing. To this day, my facility has found itself needing to isolate entire dorms for facility-acquired COVID-19. However, even in these cases, medical ensures that they adhere to continued diligence and monitoring to support corrections in managing the population. It is with collaboration that the facility can continue to operate smoothly amidst the challenges of the pandemic.
