Staff Writer

The University of Colorado Denver College of Nursing has been providing care to incarcerated individuals at two facilities in the Front Range.

Students and faculty work at both the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility and the Arapahoe County Detention Center in Centennial.

Arapahoe County Detention Center is a jail in eastern Arapahoe County. The College of Nursing contracts with Correctional Healthcare Management to provide primary care for female inmates

Denver Women’s Correctional Facility is a Colorado state prison for female offenders. The College of Nursing provides nurse midwifery and women’s health services.

CON faculty and students have been involved with the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility for more than a decade and for eight years with the Arapahoe County Detention Center, said Amy Barton, RN, PhD and associate professor and associate dean of clinical affairs.

She oversees the CON programs at both facilities. Students are selected through a lottery system, she said.

Students do their practicum hours at the Denver facility one student at a time once a week for a semester until mid-May. They provide the on-site prenatal care for pregnant inmates.

These programs are two of many that students sign up for to earn clinical practice. Through programs like these, inmates avoid a humiliating situation where the women would be transferred to a clinic with guards accompanying, Barton said. She said the CON program at the Correctional Facility was safer and less expensive as well. Only when a woman suffers from a high-risk condition during her pregnancy, such as diabetes, are they transported, she said.

Pam Spry is a nurse midwife and clinical instructor through the College of Nursing. She is contracted with both the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility and the Arapahoe County Jail.

She said the Denver site houses every pregnant inmate in the state of Colorado. The program reduces the cost of transporting inmates to hospitals to receive care, as well as lessens the security risk.

"They don’t have to go out in jumpsuits and shackles," she explained.

Also, incarceration of pregnant women tends to help them get clean and healthier for pregnancy since they are given prenatal care, not allowed to smoke, drink or do drugs, and they are away from abusive partners and fed three meals a day.

Spry said students see a variety of patients, from low-risk to high-risk pregnancies.

She said these patients have high-risk behaviors, like drug and alcohol abuse, as well as medical complications.

Though incarcerated, they are taken out of their high-risk social conditions, ultimately benefiting the woman and the fetus, she explained.

Currently there are 23 pregnant inmates at Denver Women’s Correctional Facility; approximately 30 to 40 inmates deliver their babies while incarcerated each year.

All women deliver at Denver Health.

Others finish their sentences, get paroled or enter a rehabilitation program, Spry said.

Midwifery students go to the Women’s Facility for their clinical experience - or women’s health students for their OB experience.

At the Arapahoe County Detention Center, a faculty member and a student visit four to six hours every other week, Barton said. The inmates at Arapahoe are serving shorter terms for violations like unpaid traffic tickets, said CON spokewoman . The faculty member and the student conduct pregnancy care as well as general women’s health.

Students who work with incarcerated women earn more than just their practicum hours, Barton said. She called it an alternative learning experience for nurses in continuing education.

"Students are able to learn clinical care from their own faculty," Barton said. "I think the students see this as a fairly positive experience. They recognize it as a siutaiton where a patient is vulnerable and in need of care. It expands their views of society and the healthcare disparities as well."

Spry said students may be intimidated at first as they enter the gates of the correctional facility, but by the end "they seen a wide variety of women and personalities, just like a normal clinic."

Spry said she and the students feel safe and secure in the facilities, more so than a men’s correctional facility or an inner city clinic, like the Detriot clinic where Spry worked for seven years.

"The women who come to receive medical care don’t have issues with us because they know we are trying to help them," Spry said. "They appreciate that."