The impact of concordant communication in outpatient care planning - nurses' perspective

AIM: To elucidate registered nurses' experiences of coordinated care planning in outpatient care. BACKGROUND: Coordinated care planning has been studied from the perspectives of both patients and nurses in inpatient care, but it is deficient in outpatient care. METHOD: Qualitative content analysis of interviews with 10 registered nurses participating in two focus groups. RESULTS: An overall theme was identified: creating concordant communication in relation to patient and health-care providers. The result is based on four categories and nine subcategories. CONCLUSIONS: Nurses need extraordinary communication skills to reach concordance in outpatient care planning. In addition to involving and supporting the patients and next of kin in the decision-making process, the outcome of the nursing process must be understood by colleagues and members of other professions and health-care providers (non-nursing). IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT: An effective outpatient care-planning process requires that care managers understand the impact of communicating, transferring information and reaching consensus with other health-care providers, actively supporting employees in the outpatient care-planning process and contributing to the development of common goals and policy documents across organisational boundaries.