STRUCTURING CLINICAL SUPERVISION
Supporting Safe Practice, Sustainable Teams and Strong Governance
Professional supervision is a cornerstone of safe, ethical and effective occupational therapy practice.
As services grow, particularly in disability and community settings, establishing clear and sustainable supervision structures becomes essential.
At The Back Up , we support organisations to design supervision agreements that support clinicians,
their clients and align with organisational capacity.
This works towards our aims of promoting systemic support for clinicians and aiding best practice outcomes.
What is Professional Supervision?
Professional supervision is a structured and reflective process, where a clinician works with a more experienced clinician generally within four key functions:
Formative (Learning):
Normative (Governance/administrative)
Restorative (Support)
Developmental (Professional growth)
Effective supervision supports clinicians to be aware of their scope of practice, their current skill levels, strengthen clinical reasoning and maintain awareness of best practice procedures. It also guides action planning to support ongoing professional development, enhancing scope of practice, skill levels and subsequently building capable, competent and confident clinicians.
Many professional regulators and quality frameworks expect organisations to demonstrate that clinicians receive appropriate supervision and professional support.
To be beneficial Supervision must be sustainable and of high quality
While supervision is essential, it also needs to be practical and achievable within organisational resources.
Organisations must consider:
- Workforce size
- Supervisor experience levels (New supervisors may require their own supervision)
- Supervisee experience levels (How much supervision/support they will require)
- Supervisor and management role separation
- Structure and costs associated with ongoing supervisor skill building, auditing and evaluation
- Protected time for supervision
- Budget for supervision including loss of billable time for the supervisor and for each supervisee.