Health Care: Ambulatory Care Nursing

Health Care: Ambulatory Care Nursing

The nursing profession offers many fields of specialty. Ambulatory nursing practice is often different from other nursing specialties in a number of ways. As Stokowski (2011) noted, the current views on ambulatory nursing are different fromwhat used to be the understanding ten years ago. Involved parties have made changes in the scope of the field to suit the current patient care requirements. Differences in health care setting have necessitated most of the changes. For instance, there are differences  in the occurrence of chronic diseases, lengths of hospitalization, as well as the complexity of procedures performed on patients (Stokowski, 2011). The nature of the specialty allows nurses to attend patients from different settings. They could attend outpatients just as they can attend inpatients. In addition, ambulatory care nurses could attend patients from offices, community health facilities, homes, schools, ambulatory surgical clinics, and gastrointestinal laboratories among others (Stokowski, 2011). Patient care demands change with time and adjustment in various practices in the sector are vital. In most cases, the changes require allocation of more roles to nurses. As such, the scope of ambulatory nursing has expanded to improve patient care.

Discussions relating ambulatory nursing aim at defining the practice, and describing it in a comprehensive manner. In addition, there are discussions to relate the specialty to general practice and how the framework could be expanded. Stakeholders also address the standards of performance expected from the ambulatory nursing specialists.

          The American Academy of Ambulatory Care Nurses (AAACN) offers a platform on which nurses in the field can discuss and express their opinions regarding their profession. The specialty organization has offered a standard definition of the practice to guide the relevantparties. The association expressed that specialists have a rich background in nursing and they employ their knowledge to offer quality ambulatory services to patients.

Reference

Stokowski, L. A. (2011, September 26). Ambulatory Care Nursing: A Specialty. Retrieved May 20, 2015 from http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/749906