Preregistration nursing students' provision of safe care—Are we leaving too much to chance?

The COVID-19 pandemic has reinforced the centrality and importance of fundamental and core nursing skills including everyday skills such as handwashing, infection control measures, patient safety and comfort measures (Alzyood et al., 2020; Cruickshank & Shaban, 2020). Since the beginning of the pandemic, there have been concerns about the spread of COVID-19 in hospitals, aged care facilities and primary care settings, and infection rates among health workers, as well as the possibility that health workers have contributed to the spread of the infection in some settings (Davidson & Szanton, 2020; Jackson et al., 2020). These factors lead us to critically consider how and where students learn the crucial fundamental skills that are necessary to ensure patient safety in order to keep themselves safe from infection and to prevent the spread of the infection to others as they deliver nursing care. Though patient safety interventions and infection control measures may be taught within education settings, there may be little opportunity for practice and consolidation of skills in the on-campus setting, and these may be left for students to practice while learning within the clinical setting.