When students think about working in a corrections facility, they may picture a Hollywood version of working in a dangerous cellblock environment. But Fred Huff, of the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), says the real atmosphere inside of a prison is quite conducive to learning.

“Many people think of prison and they think they will see lots of violence and things that happen on TV,” says Huff, the Director of Clinical Systems for UTMB, which provides correctional healthcare services to inmates in Texas. “But in the medical arena, that doesn't really happen. Corrections is a perfect fit for mid-level medical students, and we do our best to give them a flavor of various corrections facilities – inpatient facilities, juvenile facilities and out-patient facilities. We even offer a program for psychology students, as well.”

For the last eight years, medical students enrolled in the UTMB Correctional Managed Care (CMC) program have gone through a four-week rotation program that provides them with experience in different aspects of correctional healthcare in different facilities across the State of Texas.

According to Huff, this program provides budding doctors with a much wider range of hands-on knowledge than training in a traditional healthcare setting. He adds that while many students are initially intimidated by the corrections setting, they are surprised to learn how closely they get to work with people – and how different care is for the inmate population is in comparison to patients in a traditional healthcare setting.

“As time goes on, their comfort level [in the facility] increases,” Huff says. “We work with them on patient care plans and they start seeing patients side-by-side with doctors. These students are constantly supervised, however – nothing in the medical record is done without review and no prescriptions are given without review. But they still have a much more hands-on experience than anywhere else.”

A New Experience in Healthcare Training

Caring for the inmate population is also different from community care population that the program offers a comprehensive disease management guideline that helps to educate students about proper health treatment in corrections. Students are also exposed to the co-occurrence of diseases that require specialty treatment, which gives them a more comprehensive knowledge of disease management.

“The patients in corrections are interesting both medically and socially,” Huff says. “There is such a tremendous variety of disease that students will see in prison that they would never see in the regular working world. If you have an inmate with HIV and hepatitis C, you have to learn how to treat both of those issues simultaneously. You just don't see these types of cases anywhere else.”

Once students have experience in treating different types and combinations of diseases, they are more prepared for healthcare work – in corrections and in the community healthcare setting. To make sure each student is getting the most out of the program, UTMB asks for student evaluations once they have graduated. Most of the students give the program a favorable evaluation.

“Of course there will always be one or two students that don't like it, but we've had very few,” Huff says. “We have not had one student say that it was a really bad experience, even if they didn't go on to work in corrections.”

A New Kind of Patient Population

Another positive aspect of the program is that students learn many inmates are very receptive to treatment and they are a population that is perfectly created for follow through treatments, prescriptions and other medical procedures.

“In the correctional setting, if an inmate has an abnormal lab test and you ask to see that patient again, you will see that patient again without a doubt,” Huff explains. “In the community environment, if a doctor calls a patient and says they should come in for another test, that patient may go back in – or they may not. We can follow our patients in corrections that much closer – and pardon the pun, but they are essentially ‘captive patients'. We have more control over helping them medically.”

Huff adds that the innovative treatment plans, such as those for inmates with hypertension and diabetes, also impress UTMB CMC students.

“We learn something new everyday in correctional healthcare,” Huff says. “We learn new medical procedures, new treatments – it's very very interesting.”

The more passionate students become about the constantly evolving healthcare in corrections, the more they want to learn. Some students have been so successful during their rotation that they are hired immediately after their graduation. And because in-state student response to the program has been so positive, Huff says that UTMB welcomes out-of-state students to enroll as well.

“As far as this correctional healthcare setting, our students realize that it is interesting and intriguing,” Huff says. “We have had some students say that they wanted to work in these facilities before they even graduate. Because of responses like this, we want to expand our program further and we're excited about the prospect of other colleges getting involved.”