Introduction: Death of a patient is an unavoidable stage of nursing and in many cases nurse is the only person who takes care of the patient at the time of death. An experienced and committed nurse obliges her/himself to care for the patient before and after death in the best way possible.           

Materials and Methods: This research is a descriptive study that carried out in order to determine knowledge and attitude of the nurses about pre and post-death cares. The samples were 227 nurses of Imam Khomeini Complex Hospital. The number of subjects chosen from each hospital was proportional to the number of nurses of that hospital. The samples were selected randomly. Data were collected by a questionnaire, validity of which was confirmed by content validity and reliability of it was confirmed by test-retest method. Data were analyzed with descriptive statistics.

Results: Results showed that in majority of the nurses level of knowledge about pre-death cares was moderate and was poor about post-death cares. The majority of the nurses had a positive attitude about pre-death cares and a relatively positive attitude about post-death cares. There was not any sample with negative attitude about pre or post-death cares.

Conclusion: Regarding the undesirable level of knowledge and positive attitude of the nurses under study concerning pre and post-death cares and considering that the necessity for improving the knowledge is training and education, the results of this research can help authorities to provide training and educational programs for enhancing nurses’ knowledge regarding pre- and post-death cares.

Introduction: One of the main aims of religions is to improve psychological health in society and interpersonal relationships. It has been shown that religious education can be used in primary and secondary prevention of psychiatric disorders.

Material and Methods: The samples of study were the teachers of guidance schools of the capital city of Tehran. The samples were 40 depressed female teachers that were chosen randomly among the 30-40 year old teachers who were not using any drugs. Data gathering tool was a questionnaire containing Hamilton test with 24 questions about mood disorders (including depression). Another questionnaire including demographic characteristics and questions regarding change of mood after attending religious education classes was also used.

Results: The results showed that 90% of the subjects were satisfied with religious methods such as prayer, fasting and blessing for decreasing their depression 92.5% were satisfied with regular education of religious values. A total of 80% of the samples believed that training by a particular teacher would influence their interest in the religious values 55% reported calmness after praying. There was a significant differences between the mean score of depression before and after attending religious education classes (p=0.000).

Conclusion: According to the findings of this research, education of the religious values can affect anxiety, sadness, hopelessness, sleeplessness and lack of appetite and depression. Performing religious acts such as prayers causes a type of relaxation and good feeling in the patients.

Background & Aim: Chronic illnesses, such as cancer, can cause changing in self-esteem. This study has been perform to compare the self-esteem between male and female cancer patients.

Methods & Materials: In this research 101 patients (51 women and 50 men) with different types of cancer (solid tumors and leukemia) have selected by simple sampling method. The tool for gathering data was a questionnaire, with three parts: demographic characteristics, disease characteristics, and Cooper smith self-esteem inventory. Data collection was done through interview, patient’s charts and patients self-report. The descriptive and analytic statistics have been used and the exams were “chi-2” and “Fisher”, through SPSS software.

Results: This study showed that the majority of cancer patients in male and female group have moderate level of self-esteem. There is no significant difference in self-esteem of men and women with cancer and the majority of them (84.3% women) and (%76 men) have moderate self-esteem, but noticeable difference between men and women is connected to the variables that are related to self-esteem, whereas, men’s self-esteem has not any significant meaningful relationship with demographic variables, meanwhile, variables of being under support of somebody (p=0.005) and having caregivers at home (p=0.039) have a meaningful relationship with women’s’ self-esteem. Among the diseases’ characters change or decrease in function of different parts of body has a meaningful relationship with men’s (p=0.014) and women’s (p=0.005) self-esteem. Constipation is the only other variable related to men’s’ self-esteem (p=0.071), but about women there are some variables related to the self-esteem of them consist of duration of amputation (p=0.018), anorexia (p=0.001), alopecia (p=0.027) and fatigue (p=0.021).

Conclusion: It seems that, in comparison between tow genders with cancer although the women’s self- esteem is related to more variables than men, but, recognition and specify these variables can help nurses to design an effective care-plan to meet the gender-specific needs.