The NCCHC Young Professionals Committee is working on ways to attract and retain students and early career professionals in correctional health care.
“Correctional health care allows people to care for the most vulnerable patients in an environment that provides access to almost every type of health care challenge. It’s a great field,” says NCCHC Board Member Sam Soltis, PhD, MHA, CCHP. Dr. Soltis highlighted the need to showcase careers in correctional health care during his term as 2021 – 2022 NCCHC Chair and continues to be passionate about this issue as chair of the Young Professionals Committee. “But we cannot provide quality health care to the incarcerated without adequate staff,” he adds. “The first step is to make students aware of the field and the fact that it’s an excellent career option.”
To that end, the committee has created a web page highlighting the benefits of a career in correctional health care, from the freedom to practice without insurance company oversight to the wide variety of patient needs and conditions to the opportunity to make a real difference in their patients’ lives.
Committee member Leonora Muhammad, DNP, APRN, CCHP-CP, senior vice president and chief nurse executive at YesCare, has created a relationship with a local nursing program and visits the classroom several times a year. She finds it personally rewarding to share her passion for correctional nursing with students and reports that the students are excited to learn about the field. “Many of the students have never even heard of correctional nursing or have all kinds of misperceptions. Creating relationships with the next generation of nurses is a way to give back and to reach entire classrooms of potential correctional health professionals.”
Companies and individuals in the field are encouraged to share NCCHC’s web page on careers in correctional health care. It’s posted at ncchc.org/publications/careers-in-correctional-health-care/. The Young Professionals Committee expects to kick off a series of Quick Learning webinars and a video about correctional health care later this year.
