Abstract
Prisons are a unique context where nurses are required to have specific skills to ensure that prisoners receive the same type of holistic care as anyone else out of prison, including spiritual care. This discussion paper focuses on understanding how nurses deliver spiritual care in Italian prisons where there are often limited resources and where organizational priorities hinder the provision of holistic nursing. This paper draws from a previous qualitative research study that we had conducted. In this study, we observed that prison nurses reported that they experienced many difficulties related to the provision of holistic care to prisoners. This was particularly true for spiritual care in vulnerable forensic patients, such as older individuals, and physically and mentally frail prisoners. Prison officers did not allow nurses to just “listen and talk” to their patients in prison, because they considered it a waste of time. The conflict between prison organizational constraints and nursing goals, along with limited resources placed barriers to the development of therapeutic relationships between nurses and prisoners, whose holistic and spiritual care needs remained totally unattended. Therefore, prison organizational needs prevailed over prisoners’ needs for spiritual care, which, while fundamental, are nevertheless often underestimated and left unattended. Educational interventions are needed to reaffirm nurses’ role as providers of spiritual care.
Highlights
Prisons offer a unique setting for nursing spiritual care
This discussion paper draws from the data we collected from a qualitative research consisting of five focus groups held with 31 prison nurses to gain a deeper understanding of the views and Religions 2016, 7, 31; doi:10.3390/rel7030031
We found that in these prisons, security priorities based on order, control, and discipline, prevailed over prisoners’ healthcare needs, and on prison nurses’ authority and autonomy to care for prisoners, generating feelings of frustration and powerlessness
Summary
Prisons offer a unique setting for nursing spiritual care. For this reason, nurses who provide care to prisoners need to be adequately educated and trained to provide the same type of holistic care as they would in any setting out of prison [1], and in particular spiritual care. For this reason, the provision of spiritual nursing care in prisons, implies the development of specific competencies that enable nurses to integrate concepts such as “Restorative Nursing” [3] and “Correctional Nursing” [4] into their clinical practice to effectively address the conflict between punishment (i.e., doing harm) and caring (i.e., doing good) that prison settings raise [5]. The provision of spiritual nursing care in prisons, implies the development of specific competencies that enable nurses to integrate concepts such as “Restorative Nursing” [3] and “Correctional Nursing” [4] into their clinical practice to effectively address the conflict between punishment (i.e., doing harm) and caring (i.e., doing good) that prison settings raise [5] This discussion paper draws from the data we collected from a qualitative research consisting of five focus groups held with 31 prison nurses to gain a deeper understanding of the views and Religions 2016, 7, 31; doi:10.3390/rel7030031 www.mdpi.com/journal/religions. Around half of all the prisoners were not Italian and this raised issues linked to cultural differences and language barriers
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
