None listed
Conditions
Brief summary
Clinical supervision [CS], a structured staff support arrangement, has shown promise as a positive contribution to the clinical governance agenda and is now found reflected in health policy themes elsewhere in the world. However, CS is underdeveloped in Australia and the empirical evidence base for the informed implementation of CS, per se, has remained elusive. This large and generously funded pragmatic randomised controlled trial tested the relationships between Clinical Supervision, quality of care and patient outcomes, in mental health settings in Queensland, Australia. Twenty four mental health nurses attended a training course to equip them to provide Clinical Supervision to groups of colleagues in their respective work places across the State. A suite of outcome measures, each with established psychometric properties [including The Manchester Clinical Supervision Scale] measured differences within and between participants in the Intervention and the Control Arms of the trial, over a one year period. Findings confirmed that beneficial and sustainable CS outcomes accrued for Supervisors and Supervisees, and for patients in one private sector mental health facility. However, the effect Clinical Supervision had on nominated outcomes remained difficult to demonstrate across a broad front. Plausible explanations were offered for this and a new framework for future outcomes-related research studies was suggested, in the continuing attempt to strengthen an empirical evidence base for Clinical Supervision.
Interventions
Clinical Supervision [CS] is the provision of time-out and an opportunity within the context of an ongoing professional relationship with an experienced practitioner to engage in guided reflection on current practice, in ways designed to develop and enhance the practice in the future. In practical terms, CS has come to mean small groups of Supervisees (n=~6) or dyads (1:1) attending a pre-arranged meeting with an appropriately trained Clinical Supervisor, for 45-60 minutes per session, at a mont
Clinical Supervision [CS] is the provision of time-out and an opportunity within the context of an ongoing professional relationship with an experienced practitioner to engage in guided reflection on current practice, in ways designed to develop and enhance the practice in the future. In practical terms, CS has come to mean small groups of Supervisees (n=~6) or dyads (1:1) attending a pre-arranged meeting with an appropriately trained Clinical Supervisor, for 45-60 minutes per session, at a monthly frequency, for facilitated reflective discussion, in confidence, around matters of professional relevance and importance. In this trial, the outcomes of CS were measured one year after it was introduced into the working arrangements of mental health nurses across Queensland.
Sponsors
Golden Casket Foundation
Study design
Allocation
Randomised controlled trial
Intervention model
Other
Primary purpose
Educational / counselling / training
Masking
Open (masking not used)
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
All
Age
18 Years to No maximum
Healthy volunteers
Yes
Inclusion criteria
Staff inclusion criteria included mental health nurses who had been employed at greater than 0.5 FTE and held contracts for more than a year from the inception of the study. Patient inclusion criteria included those individuals who had been inpatients for more than two weeks, or more than three months on the caseload of a community mental health nurse
Exclusion criteria
Patients were excluded if they declined to participate and/or were floridly psychotic and/or had forensic histories
Outcome results
None listed