Conclusion
The cost of treating long-term conditions continues to rise in the UK, and greater use of nurse-led clinics could help to address this issue without having a negative impact of patient satisfaction. As the largest sector of the healthcare workforce, nurses are ideally suited to collaborate with other professionals to meet the demands for long-term care. Arguably, the person-centred, holistic nature of nursing practice means nurses may often be in a better position than doctors to judge a patient’s capacity for understanding and adhering to a treatment regimen (Berra et al, 2006).
Within the broader literature, nurse-led clinics have typically focused on the management of a single long-term condition but, as our population ages, the number of people with multiple long-term conditions is likely to rise. The development of a nurse-led service that could more holistically assess and manage patients, therefore, would be advantageous. The level of supervision and training for nurses providing outpatient care is highly variable nationally so a national set of competency standards would be useful to ensure optimal outpatient care continues to be delivered by nurses.