Nursing throughout the world is striving for international competitiveness and accountability for effectiveness and trust to the students, patients and the community they serve, thus making the issue of accreditation increasingly important. The purpose of this study was to explore the perceptions of the heads of private nursing education institutions on accreditation process by nursing education and training quality assurance body at eThekwini district. Reviewed literature has revealed that the South African Government has facilitated and encouraged the establishment of quality assurance through the South African Qualifications Authority Act, the National Qualifications Framework Act (NQF) and the Nursing Act. Data were collected by means of in-depth interviews with each of the heads of the seven selected private nursing education institutions. Qualitative content analysis using an editing style was performed in this study. Findings of this study revealed that nursing education institutions lack their own internal quality assessment processes as quality of teaching and learning depends on the interaction between the teacher and the students, the collective integrity as well as the professionals in the nursing education institution. Recommendations focused on periodic internal self-assessment as a vehicle to promote the culture of institutional internal self-assessment practices, as quality is seen as logical approach for conveying the importance of excellence to individuals who are nursing care recipients. Reports from the internal review should be provided by the institution to the external evaluation team prior to the external evaluators visit. / Thesis (M.N.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2013.

Thesis (MPhil)--Stellenbosch University, 2014. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Background - Student nurses indicated that the clinical environment was not conducive to learning because they were part of the ward staff ratio and clinical supervision was inadequate. Upon observations by the researcher and feedback from student nurses’ a study was planned to identify the clinical experiences and supervision. The study itself was conducted within private health care settings in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. Objectives - The objective of this study was to determine the experiences of student nurses of the clinical learning environment. To also identify the support and clinical supervision that the student nurses received from ward staff, clinical facilitators and lecturers. Methods and analysis - The CLES+T is a reliable and valid evaluation scale for the gathering of information on the clinical learning environment and supervision of student nurses. The CLES+T evaluation scale was completed by 234 student nurses within the selected sites. A quantitative, descriptive cross-sectional survey was conducted by making use of the CLES+T evaluation scale. The CLES+T evaluation scale is subdivided into three main sections with additional sub-sections: (1) the Learning environment, (2) the Supervisory relationship and (3) the Role of the nurse teacher (lecturer). Results - The clinical learning environment was experienced as mostly positive by the student nurses; however the format and type of clinical accompaniment and supervision students received varied. Conclusion - This study gave valuable insights into the status of the clinical learning environment, the clinical accompaniment and supervision of student nurses which can be useful to the nursing school in order to enhance existing nursing programmes.