Health in Juvenile Justice Youth: Increasing Non-Medical Staff Health Competency

The Juvenile Justice System (JJS) provides programs for youth offenders. The non-medical staff members are a key part of the healthcare team for supervision and informal education of detained youth. This project addressed the overall health of the incarcerated youth population through a health education intervention program for non-medical staff working at nine JJS locations within the University of Utah College of Nursing clinical services contract. Recommendations from the National Commission on Correctional Health Care (NCCHC) advise health training at least every two years. There is currently no formalized health education program at these facilities. Therefore, the goal of this project was to create six customized health education modules in compliance with the NCCHC standards for the non-medical staff. This purpose was accomplished with five objectives. These were to identify the educational health care needs of the non-medical staff using a cross-sectional survey, create an education plan, build six customized health topic modules based upon the results of the survey and the NCCHC discrepancies, provide a plan to measure program effectiveness, and disseminate findings to local JJS leadership and nationally to the NCCHC publication CorrectCare. The literature review for this project primarily focused on incarcerated adolescent health and best practices for adult education. At the time of this literature review there appeared to be no research regarding education of non-medical personnel to enhance basic health knowledge and triaging skills. Incarcerated adolescent youth are an at-risk population who engage in more risky health behaviors than their community counterparts. They have earlier ages of sexual activity, and higher rates of substance abuse and alcohol abuse. In regards to adult education, it is supposed that adults learn differently than children. Materials should allow adults to be self-directed, draw upon their previous knowledge, be applicable to their current situation and be problem centered, not subject centered. The results of the project included a few key findings. Of 312 survey requests emailed out, 107 were completed (35% response rate). The author used descriptive statistics to analyze the survey results. There were zero medical survey responses that indicated mental illness should be an education topic covered for non-medical staff, yet mental illness was the top mentioned response for a desired education topic by non-medical staff. The most common method of current health education was individual informal meetings with an on-site nurse, with general staff meetings following second. Nurses, when asked what they included in their non-medical training, reported only four health topics: medical procedures (i.e. how to contact the on-call provider), simple medication dispensing, infection control (i.e. washing hands), and first aid. Lastly, 75% of director responses indicated desire for education intervention that was basic (could apply to new and seasoned staff) and variable format (to meet needs of busy staff). In summary, these detained youth are an at-risk population. The non-medical staff is a key part of the healthcare team for supervision and informal education. Therefore, the long-term goal of this project is to ensure that the above JJS locations are providing staff education in a standardized fashion and that a continuing education program is in place.