Prisoner and prison officer experiences of access to prison healthcare
Research type
Research Study
Full title
A qualitative study exploring prisoner-patient and prison officer experiences of access to healthcare in a prison setting to establish views on the accessibility of the healthcare provision
IRAS ID
325366
Contact name
Sarah M Jarvis
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
n/a, not applicable
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 1 months, 30 days
Research summary
Healthcare available within the prison setting should be equitable to services available within community settings as outlined by the service specification for primary care in prisons (NHSE & NHSI, 2020). There has been various policy initiatives aiming to improve the way healthcare is provided to people in prison to make this more accessible and to reduce health inequalities. The research evidence has highlighted gaps around these policy aspirations and patient experiences, where patients have expressed the nature of the prison environment disempowers them to have choice and control over decisions relating to their health (Woodall et al, 2015).
Previous studies have identified views around difficulties with accessing medications in prison compared to the community, delays in prisoners receiving healthcare reviews and issues around patient dignity and confidentiality being maintained in prison environments (Plugge et al, 2008).
The overall aim of this study is to explore prisoner-patient views and prison officer views of the accessibility of prison healthcare within a category C adult male prison. This is an area that has received limited research attention to date and the perspectives of these participant groups is underrepresented in the research literature. This study aims to establish how prisoner-patients and non-healthcare staff within the prison view healthcare accessibility and it’s equivalence to community settings and to review these perspectives against the recommended standards as per the NHSE and NHSI (2020) service provision for primary care in prisons.
This will be a qualitative study where participants will be invited to participate in semi-structured interviews. The invitation to participate will be circulated via posters circulated electronically via in-cell technology for prisoners and staff email distribution list for officers. Audio recordings from these interviews will be transcribed verbatim and grounded theory approach will be applied to the transcript data.
REC name
East of England - Essex Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
24/EE/0181
Date of REC Opinion
21 Oct 2024
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion