Award winning HMP Leeds prison nurse on how looking after the city's locked up criminals 'opened my eyes'

Karen Hinsley was recently chosen as Nurse Manager of the Year for the amazing work she did during the Covid lockdowns at prisons across the country, though it was in Leeds where her eyes were opened to the challenges of prison nursing.

Karen, originally from Sheffield, started out as a general nurse before going into working with youth offenders, saying: “I had a colleague who worked in a youth offending team and I used to listen to her and think ‘that’s fascinating’.

"I worked within the youth offending team for about 10 years and loved it. It was looking at ‘how can we support young people’ and try to divert them away from offending behaviour.”

After working on a project looking at the link between health and crime, Karen was encouraged to go into prison nursing by a friend who said she would “absolutely love it” and landed a job as a “shop floor prison nurse” in 2013 at HMP Leeds. She said: “I went and it was very challenging. Very busy.

"We were involved in seeing new prisoners when they came in and identifying their needs. You had to be quite reactive if there were emergency situations. It was such a huge challenge.”

Straight away she was faced with a sobering moment when she recognised two prisoners from her days working with youth offenders. She said: “I was walking on one of the wings and somebody shouted at me and I looked up and it was these boy who remembered me.

"There used to be about eight of them who were known for getting in trouble and I remember asking them about what happened to the others and they said there was only one of them who hadn’t got into adult prison. I asked why they thought that was and they said he’d got a girlfriend and settled down. They saw that as his stabling influence.”

She said she wasn’t “intimidated” by working in the prison environment, but rather saw it as a great opportunity to use her skills for a population that “has probably never really addressed some of their health needs”. She said: “They are people who have never accessed their GP and done things that we take for granted. It’s a specialism many nurses aren’t aware of.

“It opened my eyes to how complex people are.”

Karen gained a permanent role as the primary care manager at HMP Leeds in 2015 with the company that runs the prison’s healthcare, Practice Plus Group. Asked how she coped tending to people who were being punished for committing robberies and sex offences, Karen said: “I can honestly say that when I was providing care for somebody more often than not you don’t know what the crime is. If someone’s high risk we have to know but you generally have to put that to one side because it isn’t about the crime, it’s about the person.

"I’ve met some memorable people in a positive way – people who genuinely want to turn their life around – and people who have experienced the most terrible traumas in life which has sometimes driven their behaviour.“I remember one person in particular who was homeless. For whatever reason his life choices had taken him down that route but he was one of the most positive people I’ve ever come across. I used to wonder how he did it under such difficult circumstances.

"But I’ve also met people who have been given lots of opportunity and are still choosing to go down a particular path in life.”

Karen explained that an officer would often stand watch as she went to administer care to prisoners, but added that she has never been given reason to be concerned, saying: “I never felt as though I was at risk because there's a lot of support for you to manage that. I'm not saying other people haven't but I certainly never have.

"If somebody was behaving in what's called a refractory way you would wait until they calm down, or see them in twos if there was a particular risk.”

Having never set foot inside a prison and only having insight from watching dramas and documentaries, I asked Karen what the reality is like on the inside, to which she said: “They’re very challenging places. You’re working as part of a team trying to meet the needs of complex, challenging and risky individuals.

"For staff they either love it or hate it. I love it because there’s so much opportunity professionally to develop my skills and look at the impact you can make on somebody’s life.

"For some people it’s not for them though. You have to get used to working in an environment that you have no control over.”

Karen worked at HMP Leeds until 2018 when she became the head of health care at the female prisons in Yorkshire, HMP Newhall and HMP Askham Grange. She then began supporting sites across the country during the Covid pandemic and later became head of healthcare at HMP Doncaster. She said: “I’ve moved around a bit but I’ve enjoyed the supporting of sites because it's almost taking what you already know and embedding that within a a new site.”

Karen recently won Nurse Manager of the Year at the Nursing Times Workforce Awards in recognition of her “exceptional resilience, leadership skills and compassionate approach”.

Karen said: “I’m a big believer in retaining good people and doing everything I can to support people to grow and thrive in their roles. I feel that working for Practice Plus Group aligns with my professional and personal values, and I love the teamwork, the challenge and the fact that no two days are the same. No two hours are the same!”