The Academy's Committee on Pediatric Manpower was established because of the concerns of Academy membership about the numbers of American children who were not receiving health care and the tremendous pressures for service being placed on practicing pediatricians. The Committee recognized that solutions to these problems would be complex and multifaceted. One of the solutions which it chose to pursue in some depth was that of the interprofessional care of the ambulatory pediatric patient. This concept involves what is often referred to as an "expanded" role of the nurse, working in close collaboration with the pediatrician. The concept is of equal importance to the nursing profession, a large segment of which has come to deplore the increasing separation of nurses, particularly the most highly trained nurses of the profession, from patient caretaking.