CRRN Certified Jobs

Any setting can. The ARN defines rehabilitation nursing as work with people who have a physical disability or chronic illness toward restoring, maintaining and promoting their health, and says it isn't based on a setting or a role. Its own list of practice settings runs from clinics, home health agencies and VA medical centers to long-term care, sub-acute units and general hospitals with no rehabilitation unit in them.

Inpatient rehabilitation facilities carry that obligation, and it comes from a payment rule. To be classified for Medicare's inpatient rehabilitation prospective payment system, an IRF has to furnish rehabilitation nursing, physical therapy and occupational therapy through qualified personnel, plus other services as needed (42 CFR 412.29(f)). The rule names the nursing and not this certification, so an IRF can fill the same line with an RN who has never sat the CRRN exam.

The job has to come first. Your RN license authorizes the work, and the certification board asks for the practice before the exam: in the 5 years before you sit it, either 2 years of practice in rehabilitation nursing, or 1 year of it plus a year of advanced study in nursing beyond a bachelor's. The letters come after the practice.