UKZN Welcomes First-Year Nursing Students

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More than 60 students from all over South Africa have enrolled for UKZN’s Bachelor of Nursing programme this year.

The School Of Nursing and Public Health (NPH) held a week-long Orientation programme where the students were welcomed by staff who assured them they had made the correct decision in choosing UKZN to further their studies.

UKZN’s Nursing Discipline is recognised for its innovative educational programmes, state-of-the-art teaching and learning facilities, its research activities, extensive work in Africa, and international network of scholars.

Discipline staff, Mrs Cecelia Harrington, Mrs Pretty Mbeje and Ms Edith Pakkies, said by choosing to study Nursing the students had signed up to go out and take care of people as a profession. UKZN had a mandate to ensure they graduated as exemplary healthcare professionals in four years’ time.

They encouraged the students to brace themselves for life-long learning and to remember that the very best healthcare professionals always upheld the values of the profession.

The students were taken on a campus tour by fourth-year colleagues in the programme and went through orientation at the University library as well as the Discipline’s Clinical Laboratory Orientation.

An Academic orientation and induction programme was presented by School of NPH Student Counsellor, Mrs Wuli Thaver, after the students had enjoyed mapping out their life paths and how Nursing would fit into them.

The first-year Nursing programme is directed by Professor Petra Brysiewicz who also delivered a motivational talk to the students during Orientation.

Academic Leader for Nursing, Professor Gugu Mchunu, spoke to students on the first day of Orientation, sharing personal experiences and early anxieties about being raised in a rural community in KwaZulu-Natal and then having to leave home to embark on her Nursing studies.

Mchunu said the Nursing Discipline lived up to UKZN’s motto of: Inspiring Greatness, saying students should make the most of their UKZN experience while studying hard and excelling academically.

She said UKZN was taking the profession back to its roots by cultivating graduates who upheld the values of nursing and its code of ethics.

 Lunga Memela