Many think that specialized nursing care using high technology is the most difficult of all nursing practice. While technology certainly is used in rehabilitation nursing, the constant attention to the activities of daily living and commitment to rehabilitate a patient to maximum ability-within the limits of the disability-is probably the most challenging of all nursing practice.

This kind of nursing practice hit me as a graduate student doing my rehabilitation nursing clinical practice at Zablocki Veterans Administration Medical Center in Milwaukee. I learned to drive a car without using my feet-hands only. I had patients who were paralyzed from the neck down, but could hold a paintbrush in their mouths and be creative. Our cover story about Christopher Reeve is a clear demonstration of the love, honor and care that his wife, family and nurses continue to provide him.

I learned another lesson a few years ago as I was teaching skiing to a rather large woman who had a disability. I questioned why we were teaching her to ski. She probably would never be back to the mountains to ski.

Then I received a beautiful poem and letter from her the next week. She thanked me for teaching her to ski and said if she was never able to return, her dream of being in the snow-skiing the mountains she could see from her group home in Denver-was realized. I cried. So what is this kind of nursing care all about?

It is a unitary healing, bringing the people being cared for as a whole together with their environment. It is responding to the wholeness of the human experience. We should not think of people with disabilities as being less than whole. Rehabilitation healing is the interrelationship of parts to the whole, the unique identity of each individual.

There is more wholeness in life's spirit, motivation, love and recognition of others by the disabled than those who have no disability. The need for self-esteem accomplishment and attaining the highest level of independence is great in all of us. However, the environment has to be adapted to the individual's disability in order to foster optimism, energy and the potential for caregivers to rehabilitate effectively.

I recently had a phone conversation with a friend with Alzheimer's living in another state. He said he was in a "funky mood," but later in our conversation said: "Your energy is coming through to me over the phone … ."

The hardest thing about disabilities is that there is always change in physical ability, family relationships, other life adjustments and significant losses. Nurses can improve the quality of life through health promotion, nutrition, stress management and new exercise behaviors. Most important of all is acceptance of each person with the uniqueness of who he or she is.

Discuss this and other topics with your colleagues at www.nurseweek.com/rnvillage