Nurses face their own fear of death whenever they come to the bedside of a dying patient. This fear must be confronted and reconciled before they can help others meet death with dignity. Examining one's attitude towards death is a difficult task that needs to begin in the student years, when attitudes towards working with the dying are formed. Nurse educators recognize that brief but effective ways of promoting this kind of personal awareness need to be found. An experimental study is described that investigated the effect of death education programmes and personal experience with death on the attitudes of nursing students. It was found that the death attitudes of inexperienced students who were in an experiential programme were more positive than similar students who received a didactic or placebo programme. Experienced students, however, were negatively affected by the experiential approach. The implications of these findings for nursing education are outlined.

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Relationships between worry and sex differences, social desirability, masculinity, and femininity were explored in this study. Data were obtained from 141 undergraduates who answered a questionnaire containing a worry scale, the Crowne-Marlowe (1964) Social Desirability Scale, the Bem (1974) Sex Role Inventory, the Trait Anxiety scale of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (Spielberger, Gorsuch, & Lushene, 1970), and several demographic items. Women reported significantly higher levels of worry than men did, and worry was significantly correlated with lower social desirability and with lower masculinity but not with femininity. However, multiple regression strategies revealed that sex differences in reported worry cannot be accounted for solely by variations in social desirability and masculinity. Also, sex differences in the tendency to worry were not eliminated by statistically controlling for trait anxiety, social desirability, and masculinity simultaneously.

Content, citation and theme analyses of articles and editorials published during two five year periods (1963‐67 and 1983‐87) in the Australian Occupational Therapy Journal are presented. A comparison of the two publication periods shows that: there has been no increase in the number of journal issues per year, nor in the total number of articles published since 1963. The number of articles in the research category has substantially increased; research appears to reflect the scope of practice. However, the need for a unifying conceptual framework that identifies Australian occupational therapy remains. A broader service network is evident; emphasis on promoting the profession in the wider community and a functional orientation are indicative of the shift that has taken place in marketing occupational therapy services. Recommendations are made regarding issues that relate to areas of professional concern and publication management.

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