Aleksandra Babic from the Oncologist Institute of Southern Switzerland, Bellinzona, Switzerland, highlights the importance of nurses in the patient journey at the 2017 annual meeting of the European Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation (EBMT) in Marseille, France. She explains that nurses play a key role during the whole patient journey, because they are the natural link between doctors and patients. Patients are more likely to speak to nurses about a range of problems, which allows nurses to recognize and prevent side effects at an early stage, which she concludes is the most important thing.