NURS28003 - Optimising Health in the Correctional Setting
Unit Synopsis
The health needs of offenders in the correctional setting are greater than those of people in the general community. This group often have long-standing physical illnesses and/or mental health issues. Social disadvantage and inadequate health literacy are often contributing factors towards a lower health status. While offenders often have not accessed healthcare before entering prison, they make extensive use of health services provided within prison. Thus, the correctional nurse has a major role in contributing to the current and potential health of the offender through acute and primary health care. This unit explores the role of the correctional nurse in optimising prisoner health in a highly regulated environment. This includes health promotion and health education, triaging and managing acute and chronic physical and mental health conditions and Sexually Transmitted Infection management and tracking.
Details
| Level | Postgraduate |
|---|---|
| Unit Level | 8 |
| Credit Points | 6 |
| Student Contribution Band | 7 |
| Fraction of Full-Time Student Load | 0.125 |
| Pre-requisites or Co-requisites |
There are no pre-requisites for the unit.
Important note: Students enrolled in a subsequent unit who failed their pre-requisite unit, should drop the subsequent unit before the census date or within 10 working days of Fail grade notification. Students who do not drop the unit in this timeframe cannot later drop the unit without academic and financial liability. See details in the Assessment Policy and Procedure (Higher Education Coursework). |
| Class Timetable | View Unit Timetable |
| Residential School | No Residential School |
Be Different Intakes
Higher Education Unit Availabilities from Term 1 - 2026
Recommended Student Time Commitment
Each 6-credit Postgraduate unit at CQUniversity requires an overall time commitment of an average of 12.5 hours of study per week, making a total of 150 hours for the unit.
Assessment Tasks
| Assessment Task | Weighting |
|---|---|
| 1. Online Quiz(zes) | 20% |
| 2. Case Study | 40% |
| 3. Portfolio | 40% |
This is a graded unit: your overall grade will be calculated from the marks or grades for each assessment task, based on the relative weightings shown in the table above. You must obtain an overall mark for the unit of at least 50%, or an overall grade of ‘pass’ in order to pass the unit. If any ‘pass/fail’ tasks are shown in the table above they must also be completed successfully (‘pass’ grade). You must also meet any minimum mark requirements specified for a particular assessment task, as detailed in the ‘assessment task’ section (note that in some instances, the minimum mark for a task may be greater than 50%).
Past Exams
All University policies are available on the Policy web site, however you may wish to directly view the following policies below.
This list is not an exhaustive list of all University policies. The full list of policies are available on the Policy web site .
Term 2 - 2021 : The overall satisfaction for students in the last offering of this course was 100.00% (`Agree` and `Strongly Agree` responses), based on a 15.63% response rate.
Feedback, Recommendations and Responses
Every unit is reviewed for enhancement each year. At the most recent review, the following staff and student feedback items were identified and recommendations were made.
Source: Informal student communication
Good learning resources and links to external resources provided.
Learning resources will be reviewed and updated to maintain currency and relevance to the unit content.
Learning resources are updated and changed where required. Learning resources are chosen that are relevant and current to the Australian context when available.
Source: Have your say survey.
There were no qualitative feedback responses provided through the 'have your say' survey. All questions were marked strongly agree by the 5 participants.
The quality of feedback could be improved through teaching staff encouraging the students to be more specific in their responses to the questions related to good teaching and required improvements.
In Progress
Source: Student feedback
Appreciate support given my difficult work situation
Consideration will continue to be given to students within university policies to complete their course of study.
In Progress
On successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:
- Identify the range of physical and mental health issues prevalent in the offender population, including those related to sexual and reproductive health and those experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples
- Analyse the primary health care role of the correctional nurse
- Identify organisational and cultural barriers to providing treatment for persons with acute or chronic illness in the correctional setting and provide strategies to decrease the impact
- Demonstrate principles of triage, and recognising and responding to clinical deterioration, in simulated scenarios
- Explain the prevalence of communicable diseases in the correctional setting, including Sexually Transmitted Diseases, and evaluate a program and/or strategy designed to minimise this prevalence
- Construct a health education program for an individual offender and/or group of offenders to optimise their health while being imprisoned and/or for returning to the community.
| Assessment Tasks | Learning Outcomes | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | |
| 1 - Online Quiz(zes) | • | • | • | • | • | |
| 2 - Case Study | • | • | ||||
| 3 - Portfolio | • | • | • | • | ||
| Graduate Attributes | Learning Outcomes | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | |
| 1 - Knowledge | • | • | • | • | • | |
| 2 - Communication | • | • | • | |||
| 3 - Cognitive, technical and creative skills | • | • | • | • | • | |
| 4 - Research | • | |||||
| 6 - Ethical and Professional Responsibility | • | • | ||||
| Assessment Tasks | Graduate Attributes | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 8 | |