Re: New grad considering Rehab
I'm a new grad and I decided to start in rehab because it's such a great combo of things. First, med-surg skills are used everyday. We may not see immediate post-op people, but they usually are under 2 wks post-op from their surgeries. We also use our psych and gero skills a lot.
I work in a major midwestern rehab hospital. We are known throughout the midwest--not quite the Rehab Institute of Chicago, but we're up there. We have almost 100 beds in two separate locations (80 in our main location and 20 in our satellite). We also have outpatient locations throughout our area.
I did my last clinical here and it was definitely a change of pace. We do different things on days, evenings and nights, but we work to get people out of the hospital and home or to SNF or other facilities. It's definitely not the revolving door I saw on a med-surg unit just one floor about my unit. We also have 4, 8 or 12 hour shifts, which was not an option in other areas of med-surg where I interviewed.
This unit is a general rehab and spinal cord unit. We get just about anyone who has joint replacement, amputations, pts needing endurance training after a serious illness (cancer, MI, etc.) and of course, people suffering from spinal cord injuries. One patient in particular, a spinal cord patient, was the reason why I decided to do rehab. I saw what a difference nursing made in his progress in the six weeks I worked there and decided rehab was for me.
What's it all about? In our unit, my preceptor summed it up the other day, "it's all about bowel, bladder and skin" with our patients, whether they be joint replacement or spinal cord injury. If you have problems with any or all of these, you're going to have problems doing therapy and succeeding at it.
Good luck to you. I hope you get a chance at rehab. It's hard work, but a lot of fun.
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