Open Forum

Do any of the health care systems represented here, have an Ambulatory Nurse Council or Committee? If so, what types of topics do you discuss, what is your meeting cadence, what does membership look like? I'm part of a healthcare system and RNs are being hired more and more into the Ambulatory space. With this, our organization is set to launch our first Ambulatory Nursing Council and I could not be more excited about this. I'm hoping to find out if any other organizations are doing this as well.

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Stephanie McDowell BSN RN
Yuma AZ
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We do but it has been hard. Initially we had nurses representative from all clinics (adult/pediatric, primary care/specialty care) and this just didn't work at all. We just re-launched with 4 major groups. Primary Care, Specialty Care, Oncology, and Pediatrics. This seems to be going better but honestly still too soon to tell. Our primary and specialty care group are very organized and engaged and have launched a project each (which i hope they can present at AAACN next year). The other two groups don't seem as engaged or active. Trying to work thru that with them right now. Some of the topics that the more engaged groups are looking at include code readiness and rooming standardization. They both are conducting audits to see if their interventions and strategies are effective.  Membership is voluntary. We meet monthly as our organization has a shared governance day - all councils (both inpatient and ambulatory) meet on this day. The days starts with a grand rounds and then teams go to their specific council meetings. After the individual councils meet, all of the ambulatory councils meet as a  group with me and their facilitators to report out and discuss. At the end of the day (quarterly) there is an enterprise report out to the CNOs and CNE.     

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Patricia Hughes DNP RN NE-BC
Chief Nursing Officer
UK HealthCare
Lexington KY
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Original Message:
Sent: 1/20/2026 8:52:00 AM
From: Jessica Schonefeld
Subject: RE: Ambulatory Nursing Council/Committee within Health Care System

We have a fairly robust Ambulatory Nurse Practice Council within our healthcare system. We meet monthly for 45min to an hour during lunch on the last Friday of the month. We have found that while we enjoy meeting in person, we always have more attending via TEAMS (virtually).

 

We have a strong chair-side nurse who is chair of our council, but we do struggle with finding nurses to volunteer for chair or vice-chair roles, so succession planning is something that the current chair and myself (as her leadership support) are focused on this year.

 

We have a standing agenda in which we report out on what our corporate NPC is working on to connect us with the organization, then we turn our focus and attention to items relating to our Ambulatory practice.

 

We tend to bring things to our council that may benefit our nurses, such as resources related to continuing ed or certifications, for example. We have also had our library services team speak to share information on utilizing them and their resources for research. This month we will have our outpatient pharmacy team bring some information to the council on how they can help with meds and prior auths.

 

We also work on an Ambulatory improvement project each year –  last year's project is extending into this year and our focus is on connection and communication between nurses across the different ambulatory departments with hopes to expand our efforts to connect us with our acute care partners.

 

We are likely going to be using the AAACN's focus on research to help guide us in our next improvement project if we do not find a collective opportunity organically.

 

Hope this helps – best of luck!

 

Jessica Schonefeld, MSN, RN, AMB-BC
Sr. Director, Clinical Practice Optimization

Clinical Administration
Orlando Health Medical Group (OHMG)

65 West Sturtevant Street, #115 | MP 162 | Orlando, FL 32806

(321) 841-2151 | (321) 439-0487 cell

Our councils were reorganized, but prior to that I was the chair of the Telephone Triage Committee. Here is a copy of a powerpoint presentation about the council and our work, if that helps. 

Our council was pretty well attended - we had monthly ZOOM meetings with guest speakers, and we had a lot to discuss!

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Ingrid Hawkinson
RN, MSN, AMB-BC
UCSF Otolaryngology
San Francisco CA
415-353-2148
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We have the Ambulatory and Procedural Practice Committee that consists of staff from the ambulatory clinics and the procedural areas in the hospital (our ambulatory clinics are hospital based and on the campus of the main hospital). We meet in person on a monthly basis from 7-8 AM since that timeframe is before any of the departments start their day. Our agenda consists of shout outs/recognitions, announcements/updates from leadership (our council sponsor), and then any guest speakers or information from the house-wide Clinical Practice Council that is applicable to the ambulatory and/or procedural spaces. In 2025 we had each department's Unit Practice Council present about their clinic/department. It was a really great way to see what each area does and how their clinics function. Typically we also work on a "project" but have had difficulty finding something that is impactful and relevant to the entire group. As others have mentioned, we also struggle with finding chair/co-chairs for the council so one of our goals for 2026 is to increase engagement and membership with the hopes of having at least one representative from each clinical area. 

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Christine Brown DNP APRN AGCNS-BC
Barnes Jewish Hosp
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