News

By Alyssa Evans, Marketing & Communications Specialist; featuring Jennifer Nygaard and Jamee Meier

Next week marks an inaugural celebration for ambulatory care nurses.

Feb. 7-13 will be Ambulatory Care Nursing Week, a recognition week hosted by The American Academy of Ambulatory Care Nursing.

Ambulatory care nurses work throughout CMH and provide patients with outpatient clinical care.

“Oftentimes, when someone thinks of a nurse, they think of that bedside nurse, but there’s such a big world in ambulatory care,” says Jennifer Nygaard, urology ambulatory care nurse. “Our slogan is ‘Many settings. Multiple roles. One unifying specialty.’ I think that sums it up nicely, exemplifying the fact that ambulatory care nurses cover the Medical Group Clinics, Infusion and Hospice — to name just a few of the many roles we play.”

Ambulatory care nurses work with patients for long-term care of acute issues. This can look like regularly helping an orthopedic patient who has arthritis; helping a patient who chronically wears a folely catheter and needs monthly changes; or having weekly visits with a diabetic podiatry patient who needs toenail care.

“We care for the patient even after they go home. We touch their lives sometimes on a monthly basis or even weekly. We become enmeshed in their lives,” Jennifer says.

Ambulatory care nurses work with patients to find solutions for patient issues, like having bad reactions to medications and finding transportation to appointments. Much of their work aims to educate patients on how to care for themselves so they can avoid needing in-hospital care.

“In ambulatory care, compared to acute care, we are getting out of a very focused diagnostic care,” says Jamee Meier, orthopedic ambulatory care nurse. “In the ambulatory care setting, we’re looking very holistically at the health in the home, how they’re interacting with the community, and preventing them from needing hospitalization. It’s not as emotionally and financially taxing as a typical hospital visit.”

Each day, ambulatory care nurses help care for dozens of patients who are scheduled for appointments, as well as patients who call or message a clinic. The nurses work to triage patient issues and determine whether patients need to go to the emergency room, a clinic or a hospital in Portland.

“At any point, we can get a phone call that changes the trajectory of our day. We are being an active and adaptable resource for our patients and our doctors. We can’t get too attached to the course of our day,” Jamee says. “Our day is pretty fluid. You have to be pretty agile in the ambulatory care setting and be willing to put down what you’re working on to work on a more urgent need.”

Ambulatory care nurses often collaborate with one another to solve multiple patient issues. For example, if a patient comes in for a urology issue but is also having trouble with medication, the nurses will take care of both issues for the patient, even if they don’t exactly align with the clinic the patient’s appointment is for.

“Many of our colleagues don’t realize what happens in the ambulatory care setting,” Jennifer says. “The breadth of care is tremendous and has a lot of impact.”

To learn more about Ambulatory Care Nursing Week, visit aaacn.org/events/ambulatory-care-nursing-week.