SummaryThis inventory or evaluation of social organization, attitudes and relationships of personnel and current work distribution has been, and we hope will be, helpful in our continuing efforts to iniprove our programs of caring for premature infants and of training others in this work. Most of the faults brought to light by this study are probably not unique in our unit, and practically all of them are correctible.Necessarily greater dependence on aids—nonprofessional persons trained on the job—has evolved as a reasonable, practical, and effectiae solution to current and increasing shortages of professional nursing staff. Closer integration of care and training programs will almost certainly require expansion of learning experiences and responsibilities for aids, with more and more of the time and talents of a carefully selected but relatively small staff of professional nurses devoted to supervision and training efforts. Experienced nonprofessional care personnel deserve and should have increased formal recognition as an important step toward further success in both care and training programs. Also important are a number of changes aimed a t integrating more closely these two major objectives and a t correcting as best we can those causes for conflicts, anxieties, and frustrations revealed by this study.Whatever successes we have enjoyed in our care prograni have been achieved despite serious and continuing shortages of personnel in all categories. A consequently huge care‐burden of itself has quite apparently and logically forced experienced nurses and aids to impress on d l newer workers very forcibly and quite effectively the concept of “deuotion to care duty” as the most important value guiding all activities in this Unit. This concept in turn seems to deniand further opportunity for informally supervised crib—side learning experiences even under the pressures of a caseload such as ours, if we are to attain greater successes.From these facts and generalizations, several hypotheses seem justified and are probably widely applicable:(1) When joint goals of care and training exist in a hospital unit, niajor emphasis will probably always be given to the former.(2) The ability to assume responsibility for performance of any procedure will vary directly with understanding, skill, and experience in that procedure.(3) Real or perceived ambiguities in responsibilities or authorities will interface with accomplishment of goals.(4) Exposure and correction of psychologic or social bases for conflict within any programs can do much to further the successes of such programs.(5) Finally, standards and recommendations will probably always require major modification on the basis of purely local considerations.