[Geriatric rehabilitation care: Doing the right things right]

Geriatric rehabilitation concerns short-term integrated multidisciplinary care aimed at functional recovery and social participation for relatively frail elderly. Given the geriatric clients' complex care issues, nurses should possess sufficient and appropriate competencies in order to identify and assess the relevant symptoms and intervene effectively. Yet, nurses experience a certain apprehensiveness to perform their tasks and express difficulties in multidisciplinary communication and collaboration in a constructive manner. In addition to the client's and informal care giver's perception of their input in the geriatric rehabilitation process, this study provides an in-depth understanding of the way nurses perceive their role in geriatric rehabilitation.

This descriptive study entails a quantitative and a qualitative component. The quantitative component concerns questionnaires for clients, informal care givers, nurses, and team leaders. The qualitative component aims to obtain in-depth information (i. e. opinions, meanings, and reflections) with regard to the decision making process and the performance of the rehabilitation care by means of open-ended questions (in the questionnaire) and semi-structured interviews.

Clients and informal care givers rate specific themes in geriatric rehabilitation in a more negative light than nurses and team leaders do. These themes concern the provision of information in the hospital (prior to admission in the rehabilitation facility), involvement in the draw-up of the treatment plan and rehabilitation goals, geriatric rehabilitation as a 24/7 activity, and taking into account the client's other life events. The latter three findings in particular, are caused by nurses' apprehensiveness to perform their tasks adequately.

Nurses working in geriatric rehabilitation, experience apprehensiveness to perform their tasks adequately. Uncertainty about the client's reaction or fear of damaging the relationship of trust, results in nurses not involving the clients and informal care givers in the draw-up of the rehabilitation goals. Apprehensiveness also submerges as the lack of experience or specific competences in considering the client's other life events. The recommendations address these aspects in particular.