Nurse educators need objective and relevant tools for measuring students’ clinical performance. The challenge is to combine sound historical initiatives with contemporary advances and develop assessment strategies that prepare students who are fit for award, fit for practice, and fit for purpose. Some reasons for assessing students’ clinical performance are shown in Box 1.Robust instruments are required for assessing the practice component of course modules and ensuring that these needs are met. Hepworth (1989) noted that nursing skills can readily be demonstrated through the act of delivering nursing care, and that ‘observing the student in the clinical setting clearly has high ecological validity. Problems have been identified with the assessment of practice and with its documentation. To ensure reliability and validity, assessment documentation should be open to independent re-examination, but the evidence base from which documentation has been developed is often inadequate (Phillips et al 1993). Derbyshire et al (1990) argued that: 'Clinical assessment can be irrelevant to and estranged from practice.’ Ross et al (1988) stated that one of the problems of measuring clinical competence was the limited number of clinical performance measures available.