Care of the severely ill in outpatient nursing - Results of an evaluation study

The last few years have seen numerous attempts to expand outpatient nursing and adapt it to the changing health problems of the population. Even so, outpatient nursing care for severely ill patients and those with complex nursing needs still has its shortcomings. Today, it may well be the case that these patients, too, are being discharged far more quickly from the inpatient into the outpatient sector thanks to ever greater constraints on hospital care, but there they are running up against a wide variety of problems, ones that first became obvious with AIDS but can also be seen with other groups of patients suffering from serious illnesses. The paper goes into the question of what the care of severely ill patients and those requiring nursing attention looks like in the outpatient sector, what difficulties arise from the point of view of the nursing services involved, and what challenges will have to be met in the future to improve their situation.