Empowerment through rehabilitation nursing certification.

Certification empowers nurses by validating their clinical competency and continued professional growth. This article discusses the current state of certification in the nursing profession. The potential benefits to the certified nurse and the costs in both time and money needed to achieve and maintain certification are addressed. The article also describes how the nursing department of a 284-bed rehabilitation hospital developed a program to promote specialty certification among its nursing staff. The process and outcome of this program revealed several potential research topics.