Bond P., Kingston P. & Nevill A. Operational efficiency of healthcare in police custody suites: comparison of nursing and medical provision

摘要

The Faculty of Forensic and Legal Medicine is committed to raising the standards of healthcare to detainees in police custody and fully supports the introduction of a multi-professional approach in order to achieve this aim. Bond and colleagues have undertaken research 'to examine the operational impact of a police custody nursing service on healthcare delivery in one police service in the north of England' and their findings are potentially important.The study raises a number of specific and more general issues. The authors found that 'in comparison to the traditional service, nurses demonstrated faster response times, comparable consultation times, and were perceived by custody staff as more approachable than their medical colleagues in providing handover information'. Yet we note that they state 'for legal and security reasons it was not possible to analyse clinical consultation times. However, it was possible to analyse the duration of time taken by a clinician at the police station to complete a single consultation'. This is somewhat confusing, as if 'clinical consultation times' could not be analysed how can a conclusion about 'comparable consultation times' be achieved?