Enhancing Care of Aged and Dying Prisoners: Is e-Learning a Feasible Approach?

BACKGROUND

Prisons and jails are facing sharply increased demands in caring for aged and dying inmates. Our Toolkit for Enhancing End-of-life Care in Prisons effectively addressed end-of-life (EOL) care; however, geriatric content was limited, and the product was not formatted for broad dissemination. Prior research adapted best practices in EOL care and aging; but, delivery methods lacked emerging technology-focused learning and interactivity.

PURPOSES: Our purposes were to uncover current training approaches and preferences and to ascertain the technological capacity of correctional settings to deliver computer-based and other e-learning training.

METHODS

An environmental scan was conducted with 11 participants from U.S. prisons and jails to ensure proper fit, in terms of content and technology capacity, between an envisioned computer-based training product and correctional settings.

RESULTS

Environmental scan findings focused on content of training, desirable qualities of training, prominence of "homegrown" products, and feasibility of commercial e-learning.

CONCLUSIONS/IMPLICATIONS: This study identified qualities of training programs to adopt and pitfalls to avoid and revealed technology-related issues to be mindful of when designing computer-based training for correctional settings, and participants spontaneously expressed an interest in geriatrics and EOL training using this learning modality as long as training allowed for tailoring of materials.