EDITORIAL

Susan Dean-Baar, CRRN FAAN

Editor

How Do Patients Describe Rehabilitation Nurses?

How will the patients you cared for to- day remember you? Will they remember your name? Will they or their family mem- bers be able to describe what role the nurse played on the rehabilitation team? When they tell others their rehabilitation stories, will they include examples of how nurses helped them and made a positive difference? You probably think the answers to all these questions will be yes. This issue of Reha- bilitation Nursing includes the results of an important but disturbing study about how stroke survivors and their primary support persons experience nurses in rehabilitation. Secrest’s article is a must-read for every re- habilitation nurse, even though none of us should be pleased with the results.

This study should serve as a call to arms for every rehabilitation nurse. It is not easy to come to terms with data suggesting that many patients and families don’t have a clue as to what role the nurse takes in rehabilita- tion, and even more disconcerting that some perceive nurses as actually adversarial. The immediate response of some will be to min- imize and marginalize the results of this study. Unfortunately, if we do that, we lose the opportunity to learn about how we are seen by our patients and their families. The call to arms is not about challenging whether the results of this study have validity; the call to arms is about seizing the moment to make sure that every patient leaves his or her rehabilitation team talking as much about what the nurse did for him as about what the therapist or doctor did.

We cannot afford to have patients leav- ing rehabilitation with the primary image of professional nurses being nice people, but totally in the background, or worse-that we are difficult to work with. The current and growing imbalance between the supply and the rising demand for nurses provides many opportunities for nursing to get wide public attention. If we use these opportuni- ties wisely we will be able to educate the public about what it is that professional nurses do and why we are essential to the healthcare system. Several years ago, the

PhD RN

American Nurses Association launched an “Every Patient Deserves A Nurse” cam- paign. Earlier this year, Johnson & Johnson launched the “Be A Nurse” campaign. Both campaigns proved to be great opportunities for us to tell our stories. The most powerful way to tell our stories occurs when others tell them for us because they see what a dif- ference a nurse has made-either for them- selves or for a loved one. But patients and their families are not psychic and they will need some prompting by us. They first need to know that they are being cared for by reg- istered professional nurses, and we need to tell them what we will do for them. We can- not leave it to chance and hope that they will independently identify what our role in their care was. We also need to be understanding and supportive and not adversarial when they ask questions, or when they become assettive in making sure we understand what is important to them, including assurance that they are being cared for in a safe environment.

It seems clear that the image of rehabil- itation nurses is in need of a major change. The efforts to change the overall image of nursing will certainly help us, but I doubt that we can count on that to fix our image. Changes to the image of rehabilitation nurs- ing can only be achieved by rehabilitation nurses in their one-on-one encounters with patients and families. Right now, before you turn the page, stop and think about how you are going to reframe your next interaction with a patient or family so that they will know more about what you are contribut- ing to their rehabilitation progress. Start asking patients when they are discharged what they will remember as the most im- portant thing nurses did for them while they were in rehabilitation. Listen to their an- swers and think about how the answers match with what you think are the most im- portant things rehabilitation nurses do for patients. Put this topic on the agenda for your next staff meeting. Together, let’s start the dialogue and work that appears to be desperately needed.

168 Rehabilitation Nursing Volume 27, Number 5 SeptemberM3ctober 2002