[Clinical methods in ambulatory major surgery]

A clinical method is an assistance plan which may be applied to patients suffering from certain determined pathologies and who have a predictable clinical care plan. Its implementation as a working method, in harmony with new trends in our profession on a world-wide scale, was initiated in the John XXIII University Hospital in Tarragona due to the interest shown by the nursing department directors and by some professionals interested in working with this new tool. Surgical operations carried out following the ambulatory major surgery system comprise a high percentage of those surgical procedures which do not require hospitalization; these procedures have a predictable clinical evolutionary process and a low variability.