Structural visualization of expert nursing: Expert nursing care for a patient undergoing outpatient radiotherapy.

In the past, almost all patients underwent radiotherapy during the hospital stay. So nurses took care of patients after radiotherapy in the hospital where patients could receive nursing care 24 hours a day. However, recently more and more patients have undergone radiotherapy at clinics as outpatients. This benefits them in enabling them to receive the therapy with improving QOL and maintaining their style of living--on the other hand this requires much self-care ability on their part and patient compliance of outpatient visits depends on their own positive decision-making. Nurses are considered to make decisions or take implementation of various kinds of intervention in the limited time of pre and post proceedings of the therapy when they accommodate patients directly. The process of their intervention has not so far been clarified so that the quality of the care depends on the degree of each individual's capacity or devotion. In addition, with the trend in decreasing hospitalized days, it is predicted that more and more patients will undergo outpatient radiotherapy. So it is significant to clarify the process for quality assurance of nursing.