Rehab Nursing

No, not the kind of rehab where you go to dry up! This is the kind of rehab that you go to when you're not quite ready to go home, but you're not sick enough to occupy an acute bed. Rehab is for stroke victims learning to live with any deficits caused by the stroke. Rehab is for those who have broken a hip and need to learn how to walk all over again. There is a large emphasis on occupational therapy and physiotherapy.

Some nurses refer to rehab nursing as "not real nursing." I'd rather say that it is simply a different type of nursing. True, there is not a lot of medical or surgical nursing involved, but you certainly need to have a broad knowledge base of both areas to do rehab. Working in orthopedics has given me a great understanding of the procedures that patients have undergone before arriving here. My brief term in medicine has increased my medical knowledge exponentially.

When I leave rehab nursing and return to orthopedics @ HSC (date unknown), I will not think of rehab as this unknown entity where we ship our patients off to when they no longer qualify for taking up a bed on the orthopedic unit.

It's a complicated tale of how I came to be working in rehab, and I won't bore you with details. I accepted this position primarily because of the eight-hour nights, no days and no evenings; it's a term position that is mine potentially until July 2011.

What do I not like about rehab nursing? Hmm, no IV starts, no IV meds, no pre-op or post-op patients. No vital signs needed on nights. No assessments unless indicated by a patients condition. In short, it is far removed from my "the sicker my patients, the happier I am" mantra. The excitement and unpredictability of HSC trauma nursing is not present here, and I miss it more with each passing day.

What do I like about rehab nursing? The nights are relatively laid back which is perfect for right now, but won't always be what I need. I am the only nurse for twenty patients; working alone is teaching me to rely on my judgement and trust in my assessment skills. Handing out meds to the majority of the patients in the early morning hours requires organizational skills and lots of triple and quadruple checking your meds against the patients med sheets. Doing paperwork for twenty patients is amazingly quick! Taping report is a breeze when they've all had a good, quiet night.

Those positives do not include all the positive human aspects of rehab nursing. Of the 17 patients on the ward tonight, I know the names of all of them by memory. And I've gotten to know a lot of their personalities and stories. I've got a feel for the ones I can joke with (almost all) and the ones I cannot joke with (only one). In short, rehab nursing allows you to build relationships past the point of rapport building; this is both a good thing and a bad thing.

To summarize, I'm enjoying my time here and plan to finish my term, but I do not want to finish out my career here.

I've now worked in emerg, medicine, and rehab at this facility. Perhaps a little labor and delivery experience would round out my knowledge base even further.