Currently, nursing theory is not a South African Nursing Council requirement for pre-registration nursing education curricula. OBJECTIVE to determine registered nurses' (RNs) attitudes towards nursing models. METHODS replication of McKenna's (1994) 20-item Likert-type self-completion questionnaire with adaptations. METHODS A 1,600-bedded State-funded academic hospital in Cape Town, South Africa. METHODS Two groups: RNs who had nursing degrees and RNs who had a traditional diploma training. RESULTS Results from the Mann-Whitney U-test for independent samples indicates that at the 0.05 level of significance there was no difference in how each group of RNs responded to 19 statement items so there was not enough evidence to reject the Null Hypothesis for these statements (P < 0.05). However, as a group, the diploma-prepared RNs appeared to have a more positive attitude than the graduate RNs towards nursing models.