Supervision is an integral part of your development as a professional. It is an active exercise and an opportunity for you to reflect on and direct the development of your knowledge and skills. Within this environment your objective should be to improve and develop your abilities within the overarching goal of optimising your effectiveness as a professional for the benefit of your service users.
Supervision can have different forms and functions, and there are a wide variety of terms used depending on your place of work and the purpose of supervision. You may see elements of many of the following in a single supervision session or you may have more than one supervisor for different purposes. The forms include:
- Practice / clinical supervision, which aims to support learning and development related to specific work-based activities.
- Professional supervision, which is largely focused on identifying professional learning and development needs and CPD opportunities.
- Operational / line management supervision, which is largely focused on adherence to work-based policies and processes
- Educational supervision, provided for registrants on academic pathways, for example, a trainee advanced practitioner undertaking a post-graduate master’s qualification.
Supervision is essential to support continuing professional development and plays a key part in ensuring good practice and high-quality care. Professionals at all levels of their career benefit from supervision, as it provides an important opportunity to reflect on your professional practice, including what went well, what could have gone better and where improvements could be made.
For more information about reflective practice and how supervision can support this, look at our reflective practice materials.
Practice supervision is not line management supervision
It’s important to remember that practice and professional supervision are distinct from managerial supervision and formal appraisal, which are instead focused on ensuring that organisational and professional policies are met. Practice supervision is not an assessment of a person’s competence, but an opportunity to support the development of their capabilities.
While both practice and managerial supervision are important for development, managerial supervision and appraisals are used to assess a person’s performance against aspects such as resource and time management and is usually led by a line manager on an annual basis.
Practice and professional supervision, on the other hand, are about supporting and enhancing a person’s practice, by enabling a person to reflect on and review their work. Unlike managerial supervision, practice supervision should be led by the supervisee so that they can identify individual training and development needs. It should also take place on a regular basis to provide continued support. Practice supervision may be a form of CPD if it involves professional learning and development which complements your practice and reflects the needs of your service users.
It’s important that you have access to practice / professional supervision, as well as managerial supervision. If possible, there are benefits to keeping these separate to enable you to openly reflect on and improve your professional skills and practice. One way that this can be achieved is by having managerial and practice / professional supervision with different people, which can help establish clear boundaries.
Practice supervision can also be distinguished from other forms of professional support, which is focused on everyday work practices and pastoral support. Health and care professionals at all levels of experience require continuous and ongoing access to professional support, which will be provided on a more ad hoc and less formal basis. This can be through peer support groups, preceptorship, mentoring, coaching, or counselling.
