Lisa Cuddy is House’s department boss in the first season of House M.D.
Cuddy is the dean of medicine and hospital administrator at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. She supervises House, manages the hospital’s competing priorities, and often confronts him over rule-breaking, risk-taking, and his refusal to follow ordinary clinical procedures.
Lisa Edelstein played Cuddy throughout the first seven seasons. The character is also a physician, with endocrinology identified as her specialty. Her authority over House creates an ongoing tension between institutional responsibility and his unconventional approach to diagnosis.
Cuddy is distinct from James Wilson, who is House’s friend and the head of oncology, and from House’s team members, who report to him in diagnostic medicine. Her administrative position gives her final authority over many hospital decisions, even when House’s medical instincts prove correct.