PREA Medical and Mental Care Standards: Specialized Training

The intent of the curriculum is to provide prisons, jails, community confinement, and juvenile detention facilities with specialized training for medical and mental health personnel on specific aspects of Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA). Specifically, this curriculum provides training on how to detect and assess signs of sexual abuse, preserve physical evidence, and respond effectively and professionally to victims.

Intended Audience: The intended audience is health professionals. This includes but is not limited to physicians, psychologists, nurses, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, health administrators, social workers, and other professionals who provide, support, or administer health care services in correctional environments.

A certificate will be issued upon completion. This course will take approximately 2 hours to complete. After enrolling you can access the course at any time through your student account. There is no time limit for completion.

This is a specialized training under PREA Audit Standards, please retain your certificate in case it is needed by your agency PREA Coordinator/Training Division.

Course Objectives

Health care professionals in correctional settings will learn to:

1. Identify the signs of sexual abuse and sexual harassment

2. Know how to respond in a trauma-informed way to survivors of sexual abuse

3. Recognize how to preserve and collect forensic evidence

4. Know how to report and to whom to report

In these four modules, we cover standards that impact the correctional health care arena:

Screening

• 115.41 (Screening for risk of victimization and abusiveness)

• 115.42 (Use of screening information)

Protective Custody

• 115.43 (Protective custody)

Reporting

• 115.51 (Inmate reporting)

• 115.53 (Inmate access to outside confidential support services)

• 115.54 (Third-party reporting)

Official Responses Following Inmate Report

• 115.61 (Staff and agency reporting duties)

• 115.62 (Agency protection duties)

• 115.63 (Reporting to other confinement facilities)

• 115.64 (Staff first responder duties)

• 115.65 (Coordinated response)

• 115.66 (Preservation of ability to protect inmates from contact with abusers)

• 115.67 (Agency protection against retaliation)

• 115.68 (Post-allegation protective custody)

Medical and Mental Health Care

• 115.81 (Medical and mental health screenings; history of sexual abuse)

• 115.82 (Access to emergency medical and mental health services)

• 115.83 (Ongoing medical and mental health care for sexual abuse victims and abusers)