The recent migration of public nursing colleges from the Department of Health to the higher education sector in South Africa has compelled nursing institutions to ensure that their programs meet the Council of Higher Education requirements. One of these requirements is comprehensive student support services in line with the prerogative to widen access and success in higher education. Public Nursing Colleges have reported having systems to provide academic and non-academic support to their students. However, there is limited empirical research on lecturers’ and students’ perspectives on conditions that influence the utilization of available student support services in nursing colleges. Hence, this research explores organisational conditions that influence the utilization of student support services from the perspectives of lecturers and students at three selected campuses in the province of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. The research methodology is qualitative, in which a purposive sampling of 21 participants involved individual interviews. The interview of lecturers was due to their expected role in identifying and implementing some of the student support services. The students were involved in the study because they are the ones who benefit from the existence of such services and should therefore be in a better position to report on organisational conditions that enable utilization. Data analysis was thematic as guided by the academic and non-academic areas of student support services expected of nursing colleges. There was high agreement on the availability of systems to provide academic and non-academic student support services. However, there were limited coordinated, standardized, and structured efforts to implement them at different colleges. More so, lecturers reported a shortage of critical resources. The findings suggest improving conditions to utilize student support services effectively. It should help ensure that student support activities are well-coordinated, comprehensive, and aligned with policy.

Providing health education to patients is one of the competencies that nurses develop during training because of its critical role in managing lifestyle diseases. However, novice nurses’ ability to render health education once they are in the workplace is underreported. The study aimed to determine novice nurses' competence in giving patients health education. One hospital in the eThekwini district in KwaZulu Natal province of South Africa formed the setting of this study in which a quantitative, descriptive design was used. Hence, a questionnaire was utilized as a data-gathering tool among purposively sampled 125 nurses in supervisory roles. The data were statistically analyzed and presented in tables and figures. The results showed the respondents perceived the novice nurses as competent in planning and giving health education to patients. The novice nurses’ shortcoming was that less attention was paid to family involvement in giving health education and giving health education at the patient's level of understanding based on their educational level. The study contributes knowledge on the importance of the competence of novice nurses in giving health education as a strategy to tackle lifestyle diseases.

This article aimed to investigate the availability and utilization of support services by undergraduate (UG) students in a nursing education institution in South Africa. The article employed a quantitative non-experimental descriptive design, using a self-administered questionnaire, to collect data from 118 participants selected through a non-probability random sampling method. The IBM SPSS software was utilized for data analysis, frequencies to illustrate the availability and utilization of student support services and Spearman’s correlation test to determine the relationship between variables. The results showed high awareness of 82.1% to 91.3% for the remedial programs, availability of lecturers for appointments, medical services, and compulsory orientation. Positive correlations were observed between service utilization, school type, place of origin, and parent employment status. The results reflected areas where student support can be improved to address this problem, from pre-enrolment to graduation. There is a need to improve awareness and utilization of the available student support programs through policy formulation and quality enhancement programs for impact and improvement.