**1. Introduction**

Nursing training programs play a significant role in the healthcare and educational sectors across the globe, especially since nurses continuously contribute significantly to the healthcare system [1]. At the moment, there are more than 20 nursing training programs (undergraduate and postgraduate) in existence with different significant roles in the healthcare and educational sectors. For instance, the bachelor of nursing and midwifery training program in South Africa train fundamental and general nursing care of individuals with different needs at hospitals, clinics, and occupational industries, while aiming to produce competent professional nurse and midwifery practitioner competent to function in a global context [2–4]. In contrast to this, a basic nursing program could be an intensive care nursing training program (postbasic course), which provides specialized nursing care based on the knowledge and

skills of severely ill patients [5]. In South Africa, most matriculates aspire to study the bachelor of nursing and midwifery for employment purposes, while those who completed an undergraduate nursing program demonstrate intense ambitions to study post-basic courses (e.g., intensive nursing care, operating theater, trauma nursing care, and post-graduate qualifications—honors, masters, and PhD), which satisfies the career development desires [6]. However, these ambitions remain a dream for many candidates and professional nurses because of obstacles in the nursing training programs. This chapter focuses on perceived obstacles of learner nurses in the bachelor of nursing and midwifery (honors level).

To guide the process of identifying the obstacles in nursing training, we applied only 10 criteria by the council on higher education's programme accreditation of South Africa [7], which Flott and Linden [8] mentioned two environmental settings that affect the learning outcomes of the training program (classroom and clinical learning). So far, we observed unclear goal settings by candidates for studying and selection criteria for access to nursing programs in higher educational institutions as dominant obstacles in the nursing training program [9]. The chapter discusses obstacles existing in the nursing training program following the perceptions of learner nurses regarding the curriculum of bachelor of nursing and midwifery at a selected higher education institution. Notably, there are diverse benefits inherited from the nursing training programs. For instance, having more competent nursing professionals that impact positively the healthcare services provision, increases nursing staff establishment and relief of staff workload [10], and reduces high mortality [11]. Carbajo et al. [12] noted that competent nursing professionals have a significant role in improving quality healthcare service delivery and also preventing and treating disease occurrence.

According to De Rosis et al. [13], user experiences in the training program are a key element for improving quality service delivery. The findings of the study assist in improving the designing curriculum of the nursing training programs, and its implementation within higher educational institutions and clinical healthcare facilities. We believe that failure to understand the obstacles in the nursing programs could have detrimental effects on higher education and healthcare facilities. For example, one notable effect could be defeating the plan of action for scaling up quality nursing and midwifery education and practice for the African region 2012–2022 [6]. Also, we believe that learner nurses' perspective as recipients of the training programs provides an opportunity for nursing educators and institutions to monitor the quality and outcomes of the nursing training programs. Therefore, the chapter discusses the obstacles in the nursing training program—bachelor of nursing and midwifery from learner nurses' perspective about the curriculum using a quantitative research approach at selected higher educational institutions in South Africa.
