We are very pleased to have launched our new online materials on supervision, which provide practical advice and support for registrants and their supervisors.
We encourage all registrants to engage with supervision. Our research, published in 2019, shows that supervision has many important benefits for registrants, service users and the wider health service.
On an individual level, supervision can help improve professional practice and wellbeing. It provides registrants with protected time and space to reflect on their practice and discuss opportunities for development, with the support of another professional. Effective supervision can also benefit the wider team by creating a more supportive environment. All these things combined can in turn lead to improvements in patient care and can help prevent things from going wrong.
In order to harness these benefits, it’s important that supervision is carried out effectively and in a way that enables professionals to meet their intended learning and development goals.
Helping registrants approach their supervision effectively
As the regulator to 15 different health and care professions, we believe that there is more that we can do to support registrants with their supervision and to help realise the benefits that supervision can have.
Our new web resources will help registrants to:
- Gain insight into the benefits and value of supervision for professional practice
- Understand how supervision can be used to help meet HCPC Standards
- Understand which factors to consider to make their supervision successful and feel encouraged to either receive or provide supervision.
We really hope you find these resources useful for your practice.
The multi-professional nature of our guidance also means that these resources may be useful for non-HCPC registrants who either work with or supervise HCPC registrants.
We also encourage employers to use these resources, to help establish and develop supervision for their employees.
Characteristics of effective supervision
There is no right or wrong way to engage with supervision. Each health and care professional will have their own personal learning objectives or development goals, that will vary depending on your profession, scope of practice and place of work. What is important is that supervision is delivered in a way that is right for the registrant, however there are factors and common principles that you can consider which will help ensure that you supervision is effective.
Building on the research we commissioned and feedback from stakeholders, we have created detailed guidance for supervisors and supervisees which outlines a number of important factors to consider when approaching supervision.
We have also created templates and a suit of case studies, which demonstrate how to put these key factors into practice.
While developing these resources we received a lot of positive feedback from stakeholders about the use and benefits of case studies. We will therefore be exploring the possibility of expanding these case studies to include further examples of effective supervision in practice. If you have any suggestions for topics that you would like to see covered, please get in touch with our team at policy@hcpc-uk.org
To access the new supervision materials, please click on the link below.
You can also click on the below link for more information about the research into the characteristics of effective supervision.