Clinical supervision provided to mental health nurses in England

Abstract

Background/Aims Clinical supervision has become widely regarded as a central tenet of professional practice. However, little is known about the basis for claims to the benefits. This study described the features of clinical supervision provision to mental health nurses in England. Methods A Freedom of Information Act request was submitted to 52 mental health NHS trusts in England regarding clinical supervision that is available to ∼42 000 mental health nurses. These data underwent content analysis. Each submitted document was read several times and meaningful pieces of content were assigned to one of the 10 major themes that emerged (clinical supervision definitions, discriminated clinical supervision definitions, roles duties and responsibilities, confidentiality, training, evaluations, reporting, templates, references/bibliographies, document size). Results All 52 mental health NHS trusts responded. Multiple operational definitions of clinical supervision were reported. For 29 out of the 31 trusts (94%) the length of each clinical supervision session was reportedly 60 minutes, of which nearly 80% (23/29) were held at a frequency of between four and eight sessions a year. Overall, 33 trusts (64%) reported that the supervisors were specifically trained to provide clinical supervision to mental health nurses. Of the 52 trusts, 48 (92%) had a dedicated clinical supervision policy document. Most trusts reported brief in-house evaluations, which were narrowly contained to comply with local clinical supervision policy positions. Conclusions Early professional objectives for clinical supervision have since morphed into a de facto managerial staff performance monitoring exercise which may, or may not, have other advantages.