Recent years have brought several changes in nursing care concerning the professional role of nurses. New challenges regarding health education and health promotion are observed next to the old traditional roles, which mainly included following physicians’ orders. Nurse’s skills in the field of health education should be used not only for patients with diagnosed melanoma but also for those who are at risk of this disease, in the form of preventive actions. Moreover, a person coming to the outpatient surgical oncology clinic with a suspicion of melanoma should become an objective of these actions. Melanoma is a type of very dangerous and poorly predictable cancer, which oft en has poor prognosis. Therefore, early diagnosis as well as fast removal of skin melanoma, contrary to common opinions, are actions giving the biggest chance for long survival. The role of a nurse employed in the outpatient surgical oncology clinic has a special signifi cance when early detection of suspicious skin changes is concerned. The nurse is the fi rst medical professional examining the patients reporting to the clinic in order to remove the suspicious changes. Since this problem is quite complicated, the objective of this work was to develop standard methods for “Nursing care of a patient reporting to the outpatient surgical oncology clinic in order to remove suspicious naevus”. The second problem emphasized in this work concerned the educational role of a nurse in melanoma prevention towards patients and their families. That is why a health education programme in the outpatient surgical oncology clinic for patients and their families was developed aiming at early detection and diagnosis of melanoma. The abovementioned standards and educational programme should be used for the improvement of nursing service quality in the outpatient surgical oncology clinic.