As school lead for practice skills and simulation I feel in a privileged position to help guide and support academics across all healthcare disciplines to deliver innovative skills-based learning and simulation, but it is not always an easy task. Universities are experiencing unprecedented change with turbulent recruitment and the inevitable service transformation that brings. Practice partners are also in a period of change with ever increasing patient complexity, demands on services, as well as new and changing roles and responsibilities within the workplace that require different and evolving levels of competence.

So, how do we move forward in these changing times?

The Nursing and Midwifery Council’s (NMC’s) new proficiencies for registered nurses are hot of the press, so to the opportunity rethink how we approach skills and the use of simulation within newly validated pre-registration nursing curricula (NMC, 2018). Debate continues as to whether clinical skills are best taught in university or should be experienced in clinical …