Skills and career development for registered and non-registered nursing staff in ambulatory settings can be enhanced by a multi-dimensional model, as Lisa Elliott explains

Outpatient departments are often seen as the backwater of the hospital. Littlejohns and While (1995) note the lack of research in the area of paediatric outpatient services: other than a few parent satisfaction surveys, they could find no studies on the role of the nurse in the paediatric outpatient clinic. In the light of The NHS Plan (Department of Health (DoH) 2000), it could be argued that ambulatory care is the cutting edge of health care. Thus it is essential that outpatient nurses are encouraged to develop as highly skilled and experienced practitioners and challenge previous perceptions of their role as the inadequate and unmotivated staff of the hospital (Howard 2001).