Amber, registered nurse, Beaver Creek Institution

Hi, my name is Amber Rayner. I'm a registered nurse at Beaver Creek Institution in Gravenhurst, Ontario.

I fell in love with correctional nursing because of the autonomy that it gives a nurse. As a registered nurse, in prison, we have to consider lots of aspects of a patient's health, including their physical environment, their history, maybe their lack of access to to medical assistance growing up, a lot of mental health and substance abuse. So correctional nursing, you get to tap into all of your skills and it makes for a really great day and fulfilling day.

Working with offenders may not be everyone's cup of tea, but they are a marginalized population in Canada, so they need help and I am happy to give assistance. We see people at their worst day and sometimes their best day, so it's nice to be able to have an impact on someone's life.

When people hear you work in a prison as a nurse, they say that must be scary. I actually don't find it very scary. We work with a really great team of correctional officers, parole officers, other nursing staff, the mental health department, so we're really lucky to have such an integrated team. But I'd say that the prison is a small community. We house approximately 500 offenders here on the medium side, so we see the same people every day in and out, and it's really great to see change in an inmate. So, if you're helping them with some sort of situation, it could be really, really minor in some people's eyes, but to see a change in either behavior or habits, it's really rewarding.

It's really great to see some joy in their faces, like, for instance, as the institutional public health nurse, I've been able to witness hepatitis C treatment be very, very successful when in the past it's been a struggle to treat that disease. So I've been able to tell a lot of patients that they've been treated successfully and they no longer have a viral load. And that's pure joy, makes it worthwhile.

Day one, walking into an institution is scary, I guess, because it's the unknown. It's behind walls that, you know, not everybody has access to. So it's a bit overwhelming in terms of information and how things operate in a prison. So I’d say the first day you're a bit of a zombie and luckily you are teamed up with your coworkers that really take you under their wing and show you the ropes.

So, it takes a while to figure it out and learn, but it's a lot of fun.