Establishing a cancer patient education system for ambulatory patients

Communication, coordination, and education are fundamental components of ambulatory care nursing. Yet the level of activity in most ambulatory care settings prohibits focusing exclusively on patient education. Rather, patient teaching procedures, tools, and programs must be incorporated with other activities. Several considerations for effective outpatient education include learning needs, barriers to learning, assessment of available resources (eg, environmental, human, financial), delineating roles for providing information, and selecting teaching tools and methods.