Clinical Supervision
A complex concept made simpleClinical Supervision
Clinical supervision is a formal professional relationship between two or more people in designated roles, which facilitates reflective practice, explores ethical issues, and develops skills.
Clinical Supervision
The Australian Clinical Supervision Association has deliberately adopted this simple definition to ensure that the practice of clinical supervision does not become overly prescriptive. Our intent is to allow room for various styles and theoretical orientations within clinical supervision practice, while at the same time safeguard a common core understanding for all professional groups.
We note that much confusion exists on articulating clinical supervision as a practice, and therefore, we have developed our Definitions Paper to make our position clear. We briefly examine what clinical supervision is and what it is not and differentiate clinical supervision from operational (managerial) or professional supervision. We believe that, in organisations, it is unlikely that clinical supervision will flourish without good operational supervision or managerial endorsement.
Operational supervision involves meeting organisational expectations usually in the form of predetermined hierarchical reporting relationships that focus on performance appraisal systems and individual accountability.
Clinical supervision is about the clinician, their work and learning needs. It is always clinician-focussed and led, according to individual goals, and not managerially led according to organisational goals. As the latter is subsumed, a hierarchical model of clinical supervision is immediately obsolete. The essence of clinical supervision is that clinicians choose their supervisor, negotiate a working agreement and focus on their learning goals within a safe and supportive relationship between equals.
Clinical supervision highlights the clinician’s individuality by focussing on their developmental priorities. The benefits to any organisation are that clinicians are more likely to feel professionally supported, personally understood and emotionally contained in a safe relationship where they can talk freely about their clinical work concerns.
Clinical supervision is also not professional supervision. In terms of professional gatekeeping and membership to a particular professional group, generic clinical supervision has only the clinician’s own development at heart. Gatekeeping responsibilities are left to particular professions to define and standardise in the form of basic requirements for entry to any profession.
In this way, clinical supervision goes beyond normative functions of accountability and gatekeeping, as it includes individualised development and personalised support at its heart.
Although there are a variety of clinical supervision models, generic clinical supervision uses the supervisory or learning alliance to fulfill the tasks of maintaining professional standards, focusing on educational needs and providing emotional support.
Research has demonstrated that a strong supervisory alliance in clinical supervision can enhance the therapeutic alliance that clinicians develop with clients in their clinical work.
Like therapeutic work, clinical supervision includes respecting confidentiality, yet there are parameters in that professional standards and ethical codes of practice are always maintained.
We believe that a working agreement or contract has much to offer both participants and providers of clinical supervision. Such agreements tend to highlight the importance of the process, and focus on what is possible between either party. By their nature, working agreements grow along with the developmental process of clinical supervision, itself.
The Australian Clinical Supervision Association promotes clinical supervision as a lifelong developmental process, not only for beginning practitioners or students. We believe that all good professional practice that concerns working with people requires its practitioners, regardless of their seniority or experience, to participate in clinical supervision for the benefit of both themselves and their clients.
We invite you to join us in promoting the unique practice of clinical supervision and ensure it thrives amid much confusion, misunderstanding and misappropriation.
ACSA has developed a Definitions Paper to clarify our position on clinical supervision.
