The family caregiver role undertaken by spouses of persons with dementia is described as a fatalistic career process with identifiable stages. In the first or Encounter Stage, the caregivers confront the diagnosis and losses of previous lifestyle patterns and acquire home nursing skills. In the middle, or Enduring Stage, caregivers manage extensive care routines and try to cope with social isolation and their mental pain. In the final, or Exit Stage, the career is relinquished to some degree either from death of the ill spouse or institutionalization. The career perspective of caregiving provides a framework for guiding nursing research and practice.

The purpose of the study described here was to examine the attitudes of nursing students toward people with disabilities 1 year after the students had participated in an educational program on caring for such people. The program provided (a) information about this care, (b) simulated experiences related to different aspects of care, and (c) contact with disabled people as well as with rehabilitation health professionals. The study also examined how students' attitudes were influenced by the students' age, the number of years they had spent in the nursing program, their degree of experience in caring for people with disabilities, and their amount of personal interaction with disabled people. The Attitudes Towards Disabled Persons (ATDP) scale was administered to 67 nursing students before they completed the workshop. The participants were tested again 1 year later, thereby providing a matched group for examining attitude changes over time. The participants' attitudes were significantly more positive at the follow-up. At the 1-year follow-up, the ATDP scores of the intervention group were also compared with those of a second group of nursing students (n = 170) who had not participated in the educational program. The findings suggested that completion of the educational program was an important influence on students' development of positive attitudes toward people with disabilities.

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Caring for a family member with dementia involves loss and inevitable grief during the illness duration. The purpose of this study was to determine the patterns of grief of caregivers of family members with dementia and the relationship of those patterns to the losses and experiences of the caregivers. Participants were 22 spouse caregivers and 11 adult children caregivers of family members with dementia. Caregivers' experiences were measured using visual analog scales and grief using The Grief Experience Inventory. Caregivers' perceptions of the level of affection before the illness and the satisfaction of the marriage before the illness were inversely related to grief symptoms. Grief symptoms were also related to participants' perceptions of loss of the future. Caregivers' emotional distress includes reaction to the losses they are encountering long before their care recipients die.