The Ambulatory Care Nurse You may not always receive your cancer treatment in a hospital. The preferred place of treatment in many places recently has shifted away from hospitals. You might, therefore, find yourself in a comprehensive cancer center, an out-patient clinic or an ambulatory care center.
One major reason for this shift is the tremendous costs of health care today. There is a great push to shorten hospital stays because out-patient care is more cost-effective. But more important, you benefit by going to a clinic, getting your treatment and then going home to recover in your own home and sleep in your own bed.
Antinausea treatments have become so sophisticated that many of the negative side effects that used to mean a long stay in the hospital for treatment have been eliminated. Of course, some specialized or research cancer treatments still usually have to be given in the hospital so your condition can be closely supervised and monitored. But even then, you can spend more time outside the hospital than used to be the case.
Out-patient nurses in a clinic or ambulatory care center provide a full range of services to people with cancer and their families, the exact nature of which depends on the individual setting. In many of the major cancer centers in Canada, primary nurses coordinate your overall care as you move from the ambulatory setting to the hospital and back into the community. Patients are often assigned their own primary nurse whom they can call with any problems or concerns between clinic or treatment visits. The primary nurse works closely with your oncologist so that he or she is kept informed of your progress or problems that may arise.
