New Directions in Rehabilitation

📖 The Scoop

A literature review and curriculum analysis focused on the nurse's role in rehabilitation within the multidisciplinary team. Phase 1 addressed a generic nursing rehabilitative role. Phase 2 considered the nurse's role in rehabilitation in specific conditions. The review process revealed a lack of consensus on the definition and purpose of rehabilitation and highlighted a number of tensions with regard to current practice. Multi- and interdisciplinary teamwork were presented as the best way of organizing care, but evidence for their actual effectiveness was limited. The literature suggested the current generic nursing role in rehabilitation was underdeveloped and seen as secondary to that of the therapy disciplines. Nursing input was confined to distinct areas: maintenance of patients' physical well-being by attention to basic care needs; a specialist role in areas such as continence promotion and skin care; reinforcing the input of others; and creating and sustaining a suitable environment for rehabilitation. Both rehabilitation practice and the nurse's role were relatively impoverished, but there was considerable potential to improve the situation through adopting a more holistic conceptualization of rehabilitation recognizing the need to incorporate a longitudinal element reflecting the concerns of users and carers over time. Course curricula failed to give systematic consideration to issues related to chronic illness/disability and to a generic or a specific nursing role within rehabilitation. (Contains 410 references.) (YLB)

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