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February 05, 2010
Warning: tranquilizers necessary before reading. Penn State receives 1.27 million grant to study end of life care for prisoners.
Posted on February 3, 2010 4:56 AM
Penn State researchers receive money for new prison study
By Laura Nichols Email
Penn State Collegian Staff Writer
Penn State researchers making end-of-life care for prison inmates are the focus of a $1.27 million grant.
Researchers are using the National Institute of Nursing Research grant to develop a comprehensive toolkit of tailored resources for end-of-life care in prisons, assistant professor of nursing Susan Loeb wrote in an e-mail.
Leaders of the program plan to apply study findings at six different prisons state-wide in an attempt to improve care for inmates reaching the end of their lives, wrote Loeb, the principal investigator for the study.
"Since prisons are among the most restrictive, most complex organizations -- prisons are the best context for this study," Loeb wrote. "Our hope is that findings will benefit not only dying inmates but also others who spend their final days in a complex organization."
Though the study is still in the early stages, researchers are quickly learning, said Christopher Hollenbeak, associate professor of surgery and health evaluation sciences and an investigator on the study.
"The real goal of it is to come up with a tool in prisons to improve the quality-of-life care," Hollenbeak said. "We want to provide a toolkit that would be cost-effective as well."
Current end-of-life prison programs only offer limited low-cost medications. One proposed change is the "buddy system," where healthy inmates are paired with a terminally ill inmate to help look out for them, Hollenbeak said.
So far, researchers have visited the Philadelphia prison system for a chance to experience what it is like to be in a prison as an inmate, Hollenbeak said. Researchers are also spending time with the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections in order to understand the prison landscape at all levels, Hollenbeak said.
Posted by lois at February 5, 2010 02:27 PM