The Problem of Sleep

The first patient I am going to see today wrote on his Kite: “I need something to help me sleep.” Over the course of my career in correctional medicine, I have seen literally hundreds of such requests. I have empathy for the patient who submitted this kite. There is no question that it is hard to sleep in a jail. 

First, there are the physical impediments to sleep.  They never turn the lights all the way off!  If you are someone who likes it to be really dark when you go to bed, too bad for you. And it is loud!  Most inmates are housed in large dorms with 40-60 (or more) inmates who are talking, snoring, yelling.  There are no carpets or drapes to absorb noise, which bounces and echoes in the cavernous concrete space. The large metal doors clang loudly when they close. Even footsteps on the concrete floor are surprisingly loud.

The mattresses and pillows are not designed to be comfortable.  They are designed to be secure, i.e. hard to hide contraband in. That means the mattresses and pillows are thin with little padding. Jails are cold, even in the summer, but the blankets are also often thin and may itch to boot. Inmates are not issued two blankets.

Finally (and most importantly for many inmates), there is the mental anguish that prevents sleep.  This is an alien and frightening environment.  You are sleeping in the same room with 50 other inmates, some of whom can be quite scary.  You worry about being away from your family, what will your family and neighbors think, will you lose your job, how will you make bail, what about court, what if I get convicted?

For all of these reasons and more, complaints of insomnia are common in a jail. Jail medical providers need to have a policy or guideline on how to deal with complaints of insomnia. But before I see my first patient who wants a sleeping aid, I need to review the following guiding principles in my mind:

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The Rules for Treating Benzodiazepine Withdrawal

Patients are dying in correctional facilities from benzodiazepine withdrawal!  This is not just a theoretical observation; this really is happening. This fact bothers me since benzo withdrawal deaths are preventable.  Benzodiazepine withdrawal is easy to treat!  It is certainly easier to treat benzo withdrawal than the other two potentially deadly withdrawal states, alcohol and opioids.   By far, the most common cause of benzodiazepine deaths is, of course, not treating it!    

So, is your facility at risk to have a patient die of benzodiazepine withdrawal?  To find out, compare your policies to the following Rules for the Treatment of Benzodiazepine Withdrawal.             

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Gabapentin for Musculoskeletal Pain?

At one of my recent jail medical clinics, three patients in a row requested prescriptions for gabapentin.  One was a patient newly arrived from the Idaho Department of Corrections to be housed at my jail due to prison overcrowding.  He had already been prescribed gabapentin at the prison for complaints of low back pain radiating to one leg and wanted me to continue it–forever.  The second patient was prescribed gabapentin by his outside practitioner for a boxer’s fracture that had been surgically repaired years ago.  The third was prescribed gabapentin at a previous jail due to “nerve damage” from an old gunshot wound to the upper arm (he had a large scar but no functional disability or decreased sensation).

Gabapentin prescriptions for nonspecific musculoskeletal pain have clearly become common in the community and in corrections.  These three patients represent only a fraction of the similar cases I see in my jails! I suspect that this gabapentin-mania is being driven by a belief that gabapentin is preferable to prescribing narcotics (though I would not think any of the three patients above would be candidates for narcotics).  Gabapentin, in fact, is often prescribed for musculoskeletal pain in my community first line—before NSAIDS and Tylenol, even—and many, like these three patients, subsequently believe that gabapentin is something they will need to take for the rest of their lives. 

The problem is that prescribing gabapentin for musculoskeletal pain is not evidence-based and (in my opinion) bad medicine.

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Oral Testing of Reported Penicillin Allergies?

Penicillin is miraculous.  It was discovered in 1928 by Alexander Fleming (founding the modern era of antibiotic medicine) and is still the most common antibiotic prescribed in my jails.  The dentist and I use Penicillin VK as our preferred initial agent for dental infections.  I prescribe PCN VK, as well, for strep throats.  I use amoxicillin occasionally for sinus infections and UTIs and even amoxicillin/clavulanate (Augmentin) occasionally. 

Because penicillin is so useful (and inexpensive), I hate to hear the words “I’m allergic to penicillin.” If a patient with a dental infection can’t take penicillin, for example, the dentist commonly prescribes clindamycin, which is expensive, a pain to administer three times a day and has potentially bad side effects.  I have seen more than one patient who developed C. difficile after getting a broad-spectrum antibiotic because of a reported penicillin allergy–probably unnecessarily!

This problem is pretty common since about 10% of the adult population will report a penicillin allergy.  However, research has shown that, when tested, more than 90-95% of patients who state that they have a penicillin allergy really do not. These patients can be harmed by giving them an inferior antibiotic more likely to cause them harm than plain old penicillin.

The test most commonly used to gauge true allergic status is Penicillin Skin Testing (PST). No jail or prison that I know of does skin prick tests.  We also don’t refer patients reporting penicillin allergy to an allergist for testing.  We just groan and prescribe an inferior antibiotic. 

However, this could potentially change based on research published this year on the safety and efficacy of “Direct Challenge” penicillin allergy testing.  Direct challenge means giving a low-risk (this is important) patient an oral dose of whatever penicillin you want to prescribe and observing them for an hour for an allergic reaction. This has been done in studies and has been reported to be safe and effective.

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Reducing NSAID Use PLUS NSAID Prescribing Guideline

Through many years of experience in correctional medicine, I occasionally have come up with a speech or dialogue that works especially well with patients; a speech which I then use over and over again. One of these speeches is one I use to get patients to take fewer NSAIDs.

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Constipation Plus Sample Guideline

Today’s post is a repost of an article I wrote previously about Constipation. Concurrent with this article, I have added a Sample Guideline on Constipation to the Guideline Section of JailMedicine (found here).

I have decided after many years of dealing with complaints of constipation both in the ER and in correctional facilities that bowel health is the last taboo subject.  We all received “The Talk” (about sex and reproductive health) when we were adolescents.  But nobody seems to talk about how to have a proper bowel movement.  It is a subject that inevitably causes giggling and uncomfortable laughter.  It is not spoken of in polite society.  As a result, many people do not understand how their bowels work.  I have found this to be a big problem in the jails I work in.  Inmates complain of constipation when they are not really constipated.  They are bowel-fixated when there is no reason for them to be.  Often, they need education more than they need laxatives. To this end, I want to discuss several essential factors relating to understanding and treating constipation that may help make your correctional medicine practice a little easier.

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Skeletal Muscle Relaxant Guideline

Today’s post is a repost of an article I wrote previously about Skeletal Muscle Relaxants (SMRs). Concurrent with this article, I have added a Sample Guideline on prescribing Skeletal Muscle Relaxants to the Guideline Section of JailMedicine.

Personally, I think that skeletal muscle relaxers like cyclobenzaprine, methocarbamol and chlorzoxazone are over prescribed for acute and chronic musculoskeletal pain, both in the outside world but especially in corrections. The main reason for this, I think, is that prescribers misunderstand what muscle relaxers do. Contrary to their name, muscle relaxers do not relax muscles, at least as they are commonly prescribed. Muscle relaxers are sedatives, pure and simple, and should be prescribed with that fact in mind. Instead of telling patients (and ourselves) that “I am prescribing a muscle relaxer for you,” in the interest of full disclosure, we should be saying “I am prescribing a sedative for you.”

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Transforming Our Approach to Chronic Pain

One of the most fearful and frustrating events in my correctional medicine world used to be when a new chronic pain patient would arrive in my clinic.  A typical patient would be a “Ralph,” a middle-aged man who has had chronic back pain for many years.  Ralph has had a couple of back surgeries, steroid injections and more than one kind of stimulator, none of which has been effective.  He arrived at the jail taking a long list of sedating medications such as muscle relaxers, gabapentin, and sleeping aids plus, of course, big opioids.  In addition, Ralph has alcohol abuse issues.  The reason he is in jail is a felony DUI charge.  Now he is in my medical clinic, looking expectantly at me.  How am I going to fix his pain problem? 

The answer, of course, is that I am not.  I am not that smart.  He has already seen lots of doctors, including pain specialists and surgeons, who have tried almost everything that can be tried and they have not fixed his chronic pain problem.  I’m not going to be able to, either.  In my opinion, the most common and serious mistake made in the treatment of chronic pain in corrections is when we imply that we can eliminate chronic pain. 

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My Thoughts on MAT in Jails

I recently ran across this news article on NPR (found here) about the problem of treating the large number of opioid addicted patients who are coming to our jails. There is a growing movement that all opioid addicted patients should be offered Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT) while in jail–meaning one or more of three drugs: methadone, Suboxone or Vivitrol. The article does a good job in pointing out that this is a complicated problem. Having been on the front lines of this problem for many years in my own jails (and so having that great teacher–experience), I would like today to present my own thoughts on using MAT in jails. (MAT in prisons is a separate subject that I will address later).

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Reader Question: How does a KOP Policy Work?

Hi Dr Keller,

I work in the prison system in the UK. I wanted to ask you if the prisoners have in-possession medication in America or is it all supervised? 
If you do have in-possession medication, have you seen or thought of a way for the inmates to keep the medication safe i.e. lock box in their room (this then highlights a security issues as can store contraband etc. in  lock boxes? Is there a feasible and reasonable way that inmates who want to keep their tradable medication to them self and not fear being bullied by peers for them? 
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!

After doing research in my current jail. The percentage of people who actually pass random meds check is currently 18%. Now obviously not all those that failed had them “pinched” from their possession and most certainly commonly abused meds such as trazadone and mirtazapine have been sold as “sleepers” on the wings. But for those people who genuinely get bullied for their medication or do in fact get them stolen what is the alternative measure to help them apart from to put them not in-possession and supervise them daily? 

If you have any ideas I would greatly appreciate it.

Dez

Thanks for the questions Dez! In the United States, most medications are passed in a supervised setting. “In-possession” medications are referred to as “KOP,” which stands for “Keep on Person.”  I’m going to use this term despite the fact that not all KOP meds are kept on person. Different facilities handle KOP medications in different ways, which I’ll get into. Here are the basics of KOP medications:

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