Introduction: Approaches to clinical education are highly diverse and becoming increasingly complex to sustain in complex milieu.

Objective: To identify the influences and challenges of providing nurse clinical education in the undergraduate setting and to illustrate emerging solutions.

Method: A discursive exploration into the broad and varied body of evidence including peer reviewed and grey literature.

Discussion: Internationally, enabling undergraduate clinical learning opportunities faces a range of challenges. These can be illustrated under two broad themes: (1) legacies from the past and the inherent features of nurse education and (2) challenges of the present, including, population changes, workforce changes, and the disconnection between the health and education sectors. Responses to these challenges are triggering the emergence of novel approaches, such as collaborative models.

Conclusion(s): Ongoing challenges in providing accessible, effective and quality clinical learning experiences are apparent.