Reasons for Supervision

The Reasons for Supervision

The reasons for supervision can be categorized into three broad areas viz. enhancing clinical skills, ensuring quality client care, and developing professional skills, of the trainee. This essay identifies short-term and long-term goals that help achieve the purposes of supervision. Each of the goals is supported with input on how to help trainees reach the goal.

Enhancing Clinical Skills

While enhancing clinical skills such as active listening, communication, assertiveness, being ethical, and non-judgmental, the short-term goal to provide trainees with professional support is met through monitoring, review, and discussion. Close monitoring allows for timely intervention and errors/misjudgements are promptly reviewed, and addressed from a systemic perspective. The short-term goal of ensuring client care can be met through self-of-the-therapist, which enhances the growth of a positive relationship between trainee and clients. Difficulties between the trainer and trainee may manifest out of an isomorphic relationship, that is, the trainer-trainee relationship mirrors aspects of a family relationship. “The degree of fit between the expectations that the trainer and trainee have for the training experience will often determine the degree of initial difficulty in their relationship”(Borders & Brown, 2005). Encouraging professional skills is another short-term goal that is met by aligning daily execution of roles and responsibilities to established standards of practice. “…clinical supervision entails a senior professional providing an intervention to a junior person in the same profession with the intention of enhancing the professional capacity of the latter…” (Lee & Nelson (2013) Relating positively with trainees helps them to translate the same to clients because of the good learning environment.

Long-Term Goals

One long-term goal is to help trainees understand their role and responsibilities by constantly updating their knowledge (on role) and (clinical) skills, by joining professional groups, attending training programs etc. Learning how to develop a treatment plan, is a long-term goal, which is effectively met by allowing trainees to conduct supervision without close monitoring. Discussion of live recordings of these sessions is necessary to ensure an effective outcome. Another long-term goal is to ensure trainees understand how to address ethical and legal issues, an important aspect of gate-keeping. Good record keeping is necessary to achieve this goal. “A record of supervision sessions needs to be maintained in documenting; when supervision was conducted, what was discussed, what recommendations were provided by the supervisor, and what actions were taken. A trainee should maintain a separate file for each trainee supervised”(Campbell, 2000). A supervisee-centered approach allows trainees to own their daily activities under the guidance of the supervisor. While providing supervision, I try to model four characteristics: available, accessible, able, and affable. I help trainees achieve the long-term goal of mastering professional practice by guiding them in applying theoretical knowledge in daily practice.

References

Borders L. DiAnne and Lori L. Brown, The New Handbook of Counseling Supervision, 2005.

Campbell M. Jane (2000).Becoming an Effective Supervisor.

Lee, R. E., & Nelson, T.S. (2013). The contemporary relational supervisor. New York, NY: Routledge. https://ww.routledge.com/The-Contemporary-Relational-Supervisor/Lee-Nelson/p/book/9780415854818