Correctional nurse education and training to care for and support prisoners with dementia: a systematic review of text and opinion

Objective: The objective of this review was to synthesize the best available evidence on the training required for correctional nurses to care for and support prisoners with dementia. Introduction: Nurses caring for people in aged care facilities receive training related to aging and dementia; however, this has not carried across to training for the increasing aging population within correctional settings. Most research related to dementia care is focused on the aged and acute care sectors, and there is an absence of research in the correctional setting. Therefore, this systematic review was based on expert opinion and synthesizes information related to correctional nurse training for the support and care of prisoners with dementia. Inclusion criteria: Articles focusing on correctional nurses, regardless of gender, who were responsible for the health care of adult prisoners were considered for this review. The primary phenomenon of interest was the training needs and requirements for correctional nurses to support prisoners with dementia. The secondary phenomenon of interest was how the delivery of the training could be facilitated. The context of this review was the adult correctional setting. The sources of information considered for this review included text and narratives describing expert opinion, expert opinion-based guidelines, expert consensus, published discussion papers, unpublished dissertations, reports accessed from professional organization websites, and government policy documents. Methods: A three-step search strategy was employed to look for both published and unpublished articles as recommended by JBI. The search was conducted for English-only articles, and from database inception to November 2020. All included articles were assessed by two independent reviewers for methodological quality. The data were extracted and pooled. Categories were developed and assigned based on similarity of meaning, and a set of synthesized conclusions was developed after subjecting the categories to meta-synthesis. Results: Sixteen papers met the inclusion criteria and underwent critical appraisal and data extraction. Five synthesized findings were generated from 103 findings, which were aggregated into 15 categories. As expected, the rating was very low due to the nature of the included papers (ie, non-research), and the mix of unequivocal, credible, and unsupported findings. Conclusions: The review highlighted gaps in correctional nurse training related to caring for prisoners with dementia. Training for correctional nurses should incorporate information on general aging, alterations in aging, and dementia screening and management. Other findings included the need for policy and procedures related to training nurses to become dementia experts, and the development of partnerships with experts in the community to adapt training to the correctional setting.