Pre-registration nurse education includes both conceptual and practical elements to prepare graduates for the transition to clinical practice. Workplace learning plays an important role in developing students' confidence, clinical skills and competency. This paper explores the, perhaps overlooked, centrality of self-efficacy to all areas of influence on students' and graduates' nursing practice, and proposes that clinical practice, in fact, lies at the intersection of self-efficacy and knowledge of core concepts. The potentially significant implications for both nursing education and clinical practice including the need for greater consideration of the pervasive influence of students' self-efficacy in future curriculum development, are discussed.