Ethical considerations in rehabilitation medicine.

As the number of patients with chronic illness or disability grows, rehabilitation professionals will face increasingly difficult questions. Traditional concepts of medical ethics can help find solutions to some, but not all of those questions. Rehabilitation medicine needs an expanded vision of informed consent, one that embraces the needs of patients and promotes rehabilitation's educational model. To insure that rehabilitation professionals use this model appropriately, we need to make certain that their education integrates humanistic and caring virtues with medical knowledge and skill.