Professional ambulatory care nursing is a complex, multifaceted specialty that encompasses independent and collaborative practice.
What Is Ambulatory Care Nursing?
Ambulatory care nursing is a specialized field focused on providing care in outpatient settings, supporting individuals, families, and communities across all stages of life. These nurses play a critical role in primary and specialty care, ensuring patients receive high-quality, coordinated support without hospitalization.
The Role of Ambulatory Care Nurses
Through collaboration, education, and care management, ambulatory care nurses empower patients to prevent illness, manage chronic conditions, and achieve better health outcomes. Their work spans in-person visits and virtual care, meeting patients wherever they are in their health journey.
The Value of Ambulatory Care Nurses
Ambulatory care nurses are innovators in patient care, driving improvements that positively impact the health system. They bridge gaps in care through seamless coordination, advance best practices through leadership and research, and prioritize patient-centered care. Their expertise is crucial in reducing hospital admissions, enhancing efficiency, and improving the overall healthcare experience.
Defining Characteristics
The Defining Characteristics of Ambulatory Care Nursing
Ambulatory care nursing is a domain of specialty nursing practice that provides care across the lifespan to individuals, families, caregivers, groups, communities, and populations in primary, specialty, and non-acute outpatient settings.
Through education, coaching, and counseling, Ambulatory Care Registered Nurses collaborate, coordinate, and communicate with patients to seek and maintain an optimal state of health. They interact with patients in a variety of ways including in-person, virtually synchronous, and virtually asynchronous, using care coordination, and transition management to assist the patient and family in disease prevention and managing the effects of chronic disease and disability.
Some defining characteristics of the Ambulatory Care Registered Nurse include:
- Continuity and coordination of care through interprofessional collaboration, access to appropriate healthcare services, and community resources.
- Interactions with patients which may be singular, episodic, or ongoing, but do not require hospitalization or transfer to a higher level of care.
- Leadership and support for evidence-based nursing research, practice, quality improvement, and nursing impact on patient outcomes in the ambulatory care setting.
- Management and operational oversight to design, administer, and evaluate ambulatory care nursing services and to facilitate delegation of tasks to licensed and unlicensed personnel.
- Use of partnership, advocacy, and education to assist and support patients, families, and communities in the optimal management of health care.
References
⦁ American Academy of Ambulatory Care Nursing (AAACN). (2023). Scope and standards of practice for professional ambulatory care nursing. Pitman, NJ: Author.
⦁ American Academy of Ambulatory Care Nursing (AAACN). (2018). Scope and standards of practice for professional telehealth nursing (6th ed.). Pitman, NJ: Author.
⦁ American Academy of Ambulatory Care Nursing (AAACN). (2016). Scope and standards of practice for registered nurses in care coordination and transition management. Pitman, NJ: Author.
⦁ Haas, S.A., Swan, B.A. & Haynes, T.S. (2019). Care coordination and transition management core curriculum. Pitman, NJ: American Academy of Ambulatory Care Nursing.
⦁ Laughlin, C.B., Witwer, S.G. (2019). Core curriculum for ambulatory care nursing. Pitman, NJ: American Academy of Ambulatory Care Nursing.
This content was reviewed and revised by the AAACN Publications Committee, with the approval of the AAACN Board of Directors, in late 2024.