=The Nurse’s Responsibility to the Conscientious Physician Only.= In all tuberculosis work, the nurse is singularly independent. When the patient is in charge of the dispensary physician, or is in charge of a doctor in sympathy with the tuberculosis movement, she may be said to be acting under their orders. Or rather, there are no special orders, except in individual instances, for the routine prescribed is always practically the same. When a doctor reports a case, with the laconic statement, “John Smith, such and such an address, usual thing,” he has fully stated the situation. The doctor knows what should be done, and the nurse knows what to do, and further words are unnecessary. Therefore, when for any reason the patient gives up his doctor, the nurse can still continue to supervise and direct. Months may pass before the patient revisits a physician, and during these months the nurse is the only person in touch with him. She also knows how to advise and direct those who are in contact with him. When he finally calls upon a doctor again, her visits still continue without a break—there should be nothing in her teaching that is at variance with that of the newly arrived physician. The chronic nature of tuberculosis makes this situation possible, and also makes for the extremely independent position of the nurse. Whenever the physician is in the vanguard of the anti-tuberculosis movement, he will recognize the nurse as an ally, not a rival. He will know that she will make no attempt to supplant him with the patient, since the chances are that she has been caring for the patient for months before he, the doctor, has been called in. He will regard her, therefore, as a highly efficient ally, who will relieve him of tiresome, time-consuming details connected with the case. She will take charge of routine matters that he has no time for, and thus set him free for larger and more important tasks. If, on the contrary, the physician is one who exploits his patients, who keeps the nature of the disease hidden, whether through ignorance or design, and fails to give proper instruction as to its infectiousness, then we must look for nothing but opposition and antagonism. We must hear objections as to the nurse’s interference, to her uniform, to her tactlessness, to her scaring the patient to death—and we must consider the motives which underlie them. This brings us once more to the question—under these circumstances, what is the nurse to do? Is she to discontinue her visits, or is the value of her instruction to be nullified by contradictory advice? Is a physician, who has consideration for neither the patient nor the community to be allowed to jeopardize both?