Background and Objective: Effective communication is an essential characteristic of nursing care carried out as a necessity in education to empower patients. Therefore, this study aimed to determine  Nurses' knowledge, attitude and practice about  effective communication skills in Patient education.

Material and Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 275 nurses selected via stratified random sampling in teaching and therapeutic centers of Esfahan University of medical sciences, 2013.We collected the data by a research-made questionnaire related to knowledge and attitude, and a checklist to observe nurses' communication skills. To analyze the data , Central indices were calculated.

Results: of 275 nurses , 86.7 %   made a friendly atmosphere with their patients and 72.2% showed positive feedback, while their knowledge about communication components were 79.6 % . They (67.3%) were active listeners and  they (96.7%) had close communication during patient education.

Conclusion: given that nurses' communication skills are moderate, we recommend holding communication-skills workshops especially in patient education.

Background and Objective: Patients with  life threatening diseases have to deal with the death issue. One of the common psychological problem is anxiety esp. death anxiety . This study aimed to  determine the level of death anxiety in hemodialysis patients.

Material and Methods: This cross-sectional study  was conducted  on all 150 patients admitted to Panj-azar teaching hospital for hemodialysis, 2013. The data was collected by demographic checklist and Templer Death Anxiety questionnaire scoring 0 to 15 (0-6 for low, 7-9 for moderate and 10-15 for high anxiety).  We analyzed the data  by independent t-test, ANOVA and Pearson correlation coefficient (P<0.05).

Results: Twenty-four point seven percent of the patients had low , 10%  average  and 65.3% of them had high death anxiety. Average scores of death anxiety in men and in women were 8.21±4.82 and 11.95±3.81, respectively. The relationship of death anxiety with sex (P<0.001), employment status (P<0.001), and age (P<0.002) was significant.

Conclusion: Bases on the results, the death anxiety is high in more than half of the patients with hemodialysis.