To examine how the patient's pain affects the nurse, and how nurses' attitudes influence pain control, a survey was conducted among the members of the nursing staff at the Shriners Bums Institute, Boston, Mass., a 30–bed pediatric bum facility. This facility includes a 12–bed acute care unit and an 18–bed reconstructive surgical unit. Fifty-one percent (n = 27) of the 53 distributed questionnaires were answered, a significant number for such a sensitive subject.Most nurses agreed that patients experience varying degrees of pain ranging from mild to severe, depending on the type of bum, an individual's pain threshold, and the specific procedure performed on the patient. When asked to evaluate the efficacy of the prescribed doses of commonly used analgesics, 64% felt that the medication is often inadequate. When asked how the patients' pain affects them, 72% of the nurses responded with words such as“helpless,”“anxious,”and“terrible”to describe their feelings. As one nurse expressed,“It penetrates me to the core.”Overall, replies were consistent among survey participants despite significant differences in educational background, age, and years of experience in nursing and in bum nursing. The following report is an in-depth discussion of this survey.