A Vision Becomes Reality is the story of how a Seventh-day Adventist educational institution, West Indies College (now Northern Caribbean University) in Mandeville, Jamaica, collaborated with a Seventh-day Adventist health care institution, Andrews Memorial Hospital in Kingston, Jamaica, to develop and implement the Department of Nursing Education and the first baccalaureate nursing programme in Jamaica. This is the first time the early history of this endeavour has been published.
Many individuals provided information on the history of this landmark programme in Jamaica. Without the help of the numerous people involved in the story of the college, hospital, and baccalaureate nursing programme, this account would not have been possible.
It is the authors' hope that the content will provide information on the early history of Seventh-day Adventist higher education and medical work in Jamaica as well as provide a blueprint of the process used in developing what is now Northern Caribbean University Department of Nursing and its baccalaureate nursing programme as it reaches its fiftieth anniversary in 2020.