Jail nurse uses police experience to fit right in’

Published 12:00 am Monday, September 23, 2002

Pam Williams, the new nurse at the Warren County Jail, speaks from her office at the jail about some of her duties Thursday. (The Vicksburg Post/C. Todd Sherman)

09/23/02]As nurse at the Warren County Jail, Pam Williams focuses on caring for people she might once have helped put behind bars.

She has been a nurse for 20 years, five of which she was also a Jackson police officer.

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“In 1995, I got a chance to go to the (police) academy, and I jumped on it,” she said. “The next thing I know I’m wearing a belt and a gun and putting people in jail. I loved it.”

Though no law-enforcement background is required for the jail nurse job, Williams’ experience helps her “fit right in,” she said.

Williams is the local jail’s second nurse since the program was begun in 1999, Sheriff Martin Pace said.

“We’re bound legally, as well as morally, to provide treatment,” for jail inmates, Pace said, adding that inmates’ medical expenses are part of his budget.

While in jail, prisoners receive as good or better medical treatment than they would while free, and are taken to River Region Medical Center when the jail clinic’s services aren’t enough, Pace said. The jail also in what Pace called an unusually cooperative arrangement continues to have access to semi-weekly visits from Dr. Robert Ford.

Having a full-time nurse at the jail, however, makes the entire process more effective, Pace said. Williams not only dispenses inmates’ medicines three times daily a task formerly assigned mainly to the jail staff but also is able to handle about nine out of 10 health complaints from inmates, she said.

“If not for the nurse, we would have to be literally transporting inmates to the emergency room daily,” Pace said, adding that such transportation clearly requires the attention of a deputy. “Rarely now do we actually have to transport,” he said.

Once last week, in fact, Williams was able to tell Ford he did not need to come to the jail that day since she had been able to handle all of the prisoners’ medical needs.

The county’s Board of Supervisors provides funding for a licensed practical nurse for the jail, Pace said. Williams said she also attends patients at the juvenile detention center across Adams Street from the jail.

Williams said that being at the jail full time during the work week allows her to keep watch on things like the spread of contagious diseases, treating them more effectively than the jail staff could.

“The continuity keeps the inmates healthier than getting (medicine) whenever,” she said. “I make sure they get their full round of antibiotics.”

Williams also teaches inmates ways to prevent the spread of germs on their own, she said.

“Some of these people have never seen hygiene before,” she said.

Often, too, prisoners will enter the jail without having taken care of themselves for some time, requiring extra attention, Williams said. For example, a diabetic might be put in jail with his blood sugar wildly out of control, she said.

The nurse also tracks inmates’ medical appointments when they do have them, and plans and packages medication doses for administration by jail staff on weekends, Williams said.

Sometimes prisoners will try to fake illnesses just to get out of the jail for a while, she added. “They’ll try to pull things over on me,” she said.

The most common problems Williams said she treats are seasonal allergies and congestion. Other common physical complaints are of headaches and back pain. And quite a few inmates ask for mental-health treatment as well, she said.

Williams said the inmates often tell her they appreciate her being there.

“They call me Miss Nurse,'” she said. “They say, Hey, Miss Nurse, I have this or I have that.’ I’ve got standing orders for medications I can give out. If nothing works I’ll call Dr. Ford. They know that I’m here now, and any little ailment they’ll say, Where’s the nurse? Go get the nurse.’ I’m the fix-it person.”