Methods: The changes that occurred after 1994 in the South African healthcare system saw a comprehensive healthcare services as key to the delivery of comprehensive healthcare to isolated, underserved populations from diverse socio-economic backgrounds in the country. That transformation resulted in the mandate of Nursing Education Institutions (NEIs) to produce comprehensive registered nurses who are capable of rendering quality and safe nursing care to individuals, families, groups and communities at all levels of health care. The changes occurred at the time that many NEIs were grappling with the problem of attrition in the undergraduate nursing programme. Therefore, the need to develop a retention-to-graduation model for undergraduate nurses at universities to meet the demands of the Department of health of producing increased nurse practitioners became obvious. In this seminal work, the researcher employed a mixture of quantitative and qualitative, descriptive and theory generating research design to develop a model for retention-to-graduation of undergraduate nursing students at selected rural and urban universities in the Eastern Cape Province in South Africa. An extensive empirical exploration of the factors leading to attrition of undergraduate nursing students at universities in the Eastern Cape was conducted; the main concepts for retention-to-graduation of nursing students were conceptualized. Relational statements were organized and developed. Multiple levels of triangulation approaches ensured scientific and academic rigor including credibility of the study.
Results: Thus, the candidate developed a conceptual framework which culminated in a description of the retention-to-graduation model.The guidelines for the operationalization of the model in nursing education were described.
Conclusion:
The relevance and original contribution of this model to the science of nursing has been established through presentations to conferences. Nurse educators can use the model for their specific situational context.