This phenomenological interpretation provides insight and understanding into the parents' experiences and has implications for practice, education and research in nursing.

The ICF, with its acknowledgement of the interaction between people and their environments in health and disability, is a useful conceptual framework for nursing education, practice and research. It has the potential to expand nurses' thinking and practice by increasing awareness of the social, political and cultural dimensions of disability.

A nursing colleague recently spoke of the dismay she felt at a multi-disciplinary meeting where preliminary findings of a study related to time use in neurological rehabilitation were discussed. One researcher reported that ‘too much time was spent in the bathroom’. This time was perceived as inactive, and encroaching on patients' therapy time. The nurse challenged the classification and interpretation as ‘time wasted’, pointing to the likely therapeutic nature of time spent in the bathroom – time spent coaching patients in specific tasks to develop self-care and independence. This is what rehabilitation nurses do; where possible, we don't ‘do for’ (which does speed up bathroom time), but use all opportunities to ‘do with’ or to explain, demonstrate and stand by while our patients slowly ‘do’. Rehabilitation nurses do not see bathroom time as getting patients ready for their group therapy sessions, but rather as one-to-one sessions of therapy in vivo, therapy that is focused and tailored to the achievement of meaningful tasks for individuals.