Aim: To elucidate nurses’ (RNs) experiences of co-ordinated care planning in outpatient care. Background: Co-ordinated care planning has been studied from the perspectives of both patients and nurses in inpatient care, but it is missing in outpatient care.

Method: Qualitative content analysis of interviews with ten registered nurses participating in two focus groups.

Results: An overall theme was identified: creating concordant communication in relation to patient and health-care providers. The result is based on four categories and nine sub-categories.

Conclusions: Nurses need extraordinary communication skills to reach concordance in outpatient care planning. Apart from involving and supporting the patients and next of kin in the decision-making process, the outcome of the nursing process must be understood by colleagues and members of other professions and health-care providers (non-nursing).

Implications for nursing management: An effective outpatient care-planning process requires that care managers understand the impact of communicating, transferring information and reaching agreement with other health-care providers, actively supporting employees in the outpatient care-planning process and contributing to the development of common goals and policy documents across organisational boundaries.