Models of clinical supervision of relevance to remote area nursing & primary health care: A scoping review

Abstract

IntroductionNurses in remote primary health care settings work in difficult conditions, in isolated and disadvantaged communities, and often must work beyond their scope to provide advanced assessments and treatments to support the community. Therefore, remote area nurses require support to develop their skills and knowledge to work safely within their full scope of practice. Clinical supervision is widely used in health professions for this purpose; however, models of supervision for nursing have not been implemented or evaluated within remote primary health care settings.ObjectiveThe purpose of this study was to search the literature to source suitable clinical supervision models that could pertain to the remote area nursing context.DesignAn initial search of the literature found no clinical supervision models developed for remote or isolated practice nurses so a scoping review was conducted searching for publications related to advanced practice generalist health practitioners in primary health care, including practice nurses, nurse practitioners and general practitioners. This was seen as a suitable substitute because the phenomena of interest were the model of supervision rather than the specific skills or knowledge being developed.FindingsThe scoping review search yielded 251 articles from 5 journal databases of which 11 articles met the inclusion criteria. Each clinical supervision model was described and synthesised using qualitative description. The 11 models of clinical supervision had differing formats including; individual and group clinical supervision, in‐person, telephone, medical records review and video case study.DiscussionWhilst several models were described in the literature, none were directly transferrable to the remote area context. The absence of supervision for cultural safety was significant. There was a variety of modes including face‐to‐face, virtual, individual and group proposed. Cultural considerations were lacking in all of the models.ConclusionOur study recommends a hybrid clinical supervision model suitable for consultation and validation through pilot testing with remote area nurses. There is potential for this model to be used globally in isolated contexts due to the option of virtual participation.