Supportive Supervision for Community Health Workers

Abstract

Supportive supervision plays a key role in ensuring high quality service delivery in community health worker (CHW) programs. It emphasizes regular and consistent interactions between CHWs and supervisors, constructive feedback, and joint problem-solving. Moreover, it is associated with increased motivation, better work engagement, higher levels of job satisfaction, and improved performance among CHWs. In this chapter, we analyze supportive supervision through the lens of systems thinking. This chapter uses the WHO’s health system building blocks—health workforce; health information; service delivery; medical products, vaccines, and technologies; health system financing; and leadership and governance—as a framework to identify key factors that interact with supportive supervision. This chapter aims to demonstrate that (i) supportive supervision in primary healthcare programs exemplifies key aspects of systems thinking and (ii) the implementation of supportive supervision, in turn, benefits from a systems-thinking approach.

Gender considerations for supportive supervision in humanitarian contexts: A qualitative study

“…Supportive supervision is defined as a “safe, supportive, confidential and collaborative relationship between a supervisor and supervisee, where supervisees can voice their difficulties, discuss challenges and be recognised for their successes, receive constructive feedback and emotional support, and build their technical skills and capacity” (McBride and Travers, 2021 , p. 22). Supportive supervision acts in contrast to more traditional models of supervision, which are often seen as a managerial relationship overseeing employee performance (Clements et al, 2007 ; Coyle et al, 2022 ). Accordingly, high-quality, ongoing supervision has been shown to improve service delivery, enhance motivation and work satisfaction and decrease rates of staff turnover (Ndima et al, 2015 ; Vallières et al, 2018 ).…”