Pre-registration 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, Jackson, Aveyard & Brooke, 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).