Background: Competency-based education (CBE) is adopted to reform health professionals’ education. The goal is to produce graduates who are not only competent in their fields but also equipped with the necessary social accountability skills for safe practice. Aim: The study aimed to explore nursing education stakeholders’ perspectives on competency-based primary healthcare (PHC)-oriented nursing education programmes in the South African context. Setting: The setting for this study was a higher education institution in South Africa. Methods: A descriptive qualitative method was used in this study. After taking ethical clearance from the university ethics committee, data were purposively collected and theoretically sampled from 40 participants through focus group discussion, individual interviews and document analysis. Results: The data findings reported categories that emerged from this study, which include the attributes of a competency-based PHC-oriented programme and the outcomes of a competency-based PHC-oriented programme. Conclusion: In the context of this study, the concept of CBE was portrayed as a programme with strong social accountability that aims at addressing priority health needs surrounding communities and ensuring that the health needs of the community are met while providing health delivery service to communities in their natural environment. Contribution: These findings add to the growing evidence base around CBE as an approach to strengthen PHC-oriented health services in low-and middle-income countries, a key aspect of which is providing service within communities. This enables the accessibility of quality healthcare closer to where people live and work to achieve Sustainable Development Goal number three. © 2024. The Authors.
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