What Is a Core Value of Rehabilitation Facilities?

How well a rehab facility performs will depend largely on the decisions of its nurses. These, in turn, will reflect certain values that nurses can learn, put into practice and come to embody.

Definition

• A "value" is an abstract representation of what is right, worthwhile or desirable, according to Kay Kittrell Chitty, RN, in "Professional Nursing, Third Edition."

Rehabilitation

• Since a rehab facility aims to return its residents to good health, its core values would include any routine behavior on the part of its nurses that promotes recovery.

Observation

• Observation is one such behavior. Good nursing depends on observation of the sick, noted Florence Nightingale in her book "Notes on Nursing."

Why

• Observation enables sound evaluation. The American Nurses Association cites systematic, ongoing, criterion-based evaluation of the patient's progress as an essential duty in its "Standards of Clinical Nursing Practice."

Context

• The observation entailed in evaluation fits into the nursing process; a systematic problem-solving approach that consists of assessing the patient's needs, diagnosing problems, identifying patient goals, implementing solutions and gauging how well the solutions are working, observes the book "Fundamentals of Nursing, Fourth Edition."