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File: Nurses at a hospital.
A private nursing college in Durban has allegedly been enrolling students for the past two years despite only having conditional accreditation from the South African Nursing Council, which does not allow for any training.
The KwaZulu-Natal chairperson of the Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa (DENOSA), Andile Mbeje, says this emerged at a meeting between students, parents and management of St. Mary’s Nursing College.
The Nursing Council instructed the college at the beginning of the month to halt its nursing diploma course.
Mbeje says the college was previously accredited but had to requalify after changes to the nursing curriculum in 2019.
Mbeje says, “All the private colleges were suspended from doing any nursing programme until the South African Nursing Council approved them. Right now, St Mary’s is not approved and not accredited fully. They are only conditionally accredited, provided they submit those documents. And sadly, their conditional accreditation is supposed to run up until the end of 2026.”
A total of 60 students are affected. Parents have paid R70 000 per year in registration fees.
SRC deputy president Nokulunga Xulu says students are concerned that they have been working with patients for 20 weeks per year without being registered with the council.
Xulu says, “As students, we’ve reached a consensus that we don’t want to continue with our studies because if any Nursing Council official or anyone find us in a clinical facility operating without accreditation, we could be liable for a fine or even arrested. So that is very alarming for us. So we decided it’s best to just suspend it.”
The college’s management is expected to meet with representatives of the Nursing Council in the coming days to discuss the situation. The principal did not respond to requests for comment.
