This third volume, one of the products in the Nursing Curriculum Project series "Pathways to Practice", presents the results of an extended examination of three social elements that impinge directly upon the nursing profession: feminism, higher education, and health care. These elements are fully discussed in separate papers (presented as chapters): (1) Feminism and Nursing: How the Ethos Defines a System, (2) Higher Education: Trends and Tenors, and (3) The Changing Health Care System: Nursing's Immediate Environment. Other major topics cover basic assumptions about the environments of nursing, emerging themes from these environments, and a description of the Nursing Curriculum Project. Selected references and a roster of members of the project seminar are appended. (HD)