Experience of Nurses Engaged in Outpatient Care at a General Hospital

Abstract

Purpose: This study aims to describe how nurses engaged in outpatient care at a general hospital assess the significance and experience of outpatient settings, and how the experience of the nurses contributes to the setting.

Methods: Unstructured interviews were conducted with two nurses engaged in outpatient care at a general hospital. Sets of transcribed data were descriptively analyzed from a phenomenological perspective.

Results: The outpatient care was experienced by the participants as a “place where they identify patients who may be in trouble” and a “place where they pay attention to patients even if only for a short period of time.” Their experience was supported by the intentionality of each participant who “wished to provide discharge planning” and “wished to accommodate the feelings of patients by being attentively involved with the patients.”

Discussion: The participants were deeply involved in the lives of individual patients on an ongoing basis in the outpatient care. They were oriented toward each individual patient based on their interest in that person, and through dialogue, they were able to identify events that stood out in the person’s situation and practice support tailored to that person’s life. Despite the prevailing notion of outpatient nursing as task-oriented and demanding, this study illuminates this aspect of nursing practice.