Editor's Note:In the last several columns, authors have given examples of how nursing practice has used or could use theory “borrowed” from other disciplines. A number of advantages and disadvantages have been noted in each example. In this month's column, Ms. Kodadek deals with the theory of chronicity. She describes the way in which theorists have applied crisis theory to situations of chronicity. She further describes how they have suggested stages of development during adjustment to a chronic health condition and tasks that must be accomplished during these stages. If these theorists are correct, such knowledge should be most helpful to the nurse working with patients with chronic conditions. To be able to give anticipatory guidance about such stages and to use such knowledge as an assessment tool for spotting difficult situations would seem a most helpful contribution from the theoretician to the clinician. But perhaps most exciting in this article is Ms. Kodadek's suggestion of the contribution of the clinician to the theoretician. She suggests that clinicians “try out” the theory of these stages and tasks and see if they truly work in the real world of clinical practice, and then feed this information back into the theory so that it can gradually become more and more accurate and predictive, and, subsequently, more useful in the clinical area. It is exactly this back‐and‐forth movement between theory and practice which this column is meant to highlight and which the nursing profession needs so badly today if we are indeed to integrate our contribution to society with modern scientific knowledge.