Steffani Loyd spent several years as a correctional officer before making the decision to become a nurse. She was thinking about moving into correctional healthcare for a while, but she made one very smart decision. She knew that she had to gain medical surgical nursing experience first before transitioning into correctional healthcare. At the forefront of a med surg RN’s job duties is patient safety and patient care.

She joined Corrhealth in May of 2022. She recalls, “To be honest, I did not know much about Corrhealth and they had just started their contract with Wichita County in March of 2022. I saw the posting online and decided to come on as a PRN to test the waters. After joining Corrhealth, I can say, I love the company, my HSA, my coworkers and job duties. This is a wonderful company to be employed by, and I am constantly recruiting. My favorite part of the job, is being able to work as a team, educate new team members.

We asked her to explain med-surg nursing for any new nursing grads out there. Steffani laid it out for us. “Correctional nurses should expect to treat a wide variety of patients on the job. Like a med surg nurse, a correctional nurse has certain tasks that will always be expected of them on the job. A med surg nursing job is going to help you learn compassion and care—something that most classes cannot teach.

During an average shift, nurses should be prepared to perform any of the following tasks:

• Administer medications
• Wound care and changing dressings
• Assess the condition of patients
• Check vitals
• Update records
• Equipment operation (such as IVs, feeding tubes, catheters, and oxygen tanks)
• Running blood tests on patients

Steffani’s advice to any new nursing students: “Please go into med-surg nursing and gain experience before transitioning into correctional nursing or the area of practice you want to be in. Med-surg gives an overall experience and education that can be used in any area of expertise.” Click here to learn more about our Nurse Driven operations,