Clinical Supervision at the International Crossroads

Clinical supervision, burnout and intent to leave: an Australian mixed methods study of community-based allied health professionals

“…Further, methodological problems such as poorly described interventions (Dawson, Phillips, & Leggat, 2013a), and reliance on measures that were not psychometrically robust (Creaner, 2014) have made it difficult to draw conclusions from clinical supervision findings. Most studies have paid little attention to the detailed practices that underlie the supervision being evaluated (Watkins & Milne, 2014). For these reasons, researchers have signalled concerns about the wholesale uptake of clinical supervision practice (Hyrkas, 2005;White & Winstanley, 2014), claiming that ineffective supervision may be harmful for supervisees and service recipients (Ellis, 2010;Gaitskell & Morley, 2008) and represent poor use of scarce public resources (Snowdon et al, 2015).…”

“…While clinical supervision is being increasingly adopted as a standard practice within health services (Clinical Education and Training Institute, 2011;Council of Australian Governments, 2008), uncertainty remains about the outcomes of supervision, including those related to reduction in intention to leave (Buus & Gonge, 2009;Watkins & Milne, 2014). Low job satisfaction is a significant predictor of increased turnover (Wilson, 2015), however clinical supervision has been linked to both high and low job satisfaction (Koivu et al, 2012b).…”

“…There is now a broad expectation that allied health professionals providing health care services receive regular clinical supervision of their practice (Health Workforce Australia, 2011d;Queensland Health, 2009). Despite this seemingly universal endorsement of clinical supervision, there is a lack of agreement about what constitutes effective clinical supervision practice for allied health staff (Fitzpatrick, Smith, & Wilding, 2012, p. 464) and an absence of evidence about clinical supervision outcomes, especially for this population (Livni, Crowe, & Gonsalvez, 2012;Watkins & Milne, 2014). It is important to establish the elements of clinical supervision that contribute to effectiveness as well as identify characteristics associated with ineffective supervision practice.…”

“…It may be that findings of supervision ineffectiveness derive from studies where supervisors lacked the expertise to fulfill the educational function, resulting in the delivery of sub-standard supervision. Some researchers have suggested that ineffective supervision may be harmful for supervisees and service recipients (Ellis, 2010;Gaitskell & Morley, 2008;White & Winstanley, 2010), highlighting this potential risk and the need to establish the antecedents of effective supervision (Watkins & Milne, 2014).…”

“…Hence, within Australia there has been a national drive to implement clinical supervision across public health services (Health Workforce Australia, 2010). However, at the same time that clinical supervision is being increasingly adopted as a standard practice within health services (Clinical Education and Training Institute, 2011;Council of Australian Governments, 2008), uncertainty remains about the outcomes of supervision, including whether it is an effective mechanism for improving the safety and quality of health services (Buus & Gonge, 2009;Watkins & Milne, 2014). While the clinical supervision literature is considerable, there is a lack of agreement about what constitutes the practice of clinical supervision (Lynch, Happell, & Sharrock, 2008) and there have been a limited number of studies investigating clinical supervision outcomes (Carpenter et al, 2013).…”