Supervision helps you reflect on your practice, identify areas for improvement, and put development plans or strategies in place. It also helps you meet our standards.
Supervision is one way you can complete continuing professional development (CPD), an important part of meeting our Standards of conduct, performance and ethics.
This blog post explores the benefits of supervision for both registrants and service users.
Supervision can take a variety of different forms. It could be a regular one-to-one meeting with your line manager, clinical supervision with a peer or supervision in groups.
Supervisory activities can include:
- structured discussions of your caseload;
- assistance with particular tasks;
- performance reviews and monitoring;
- reflective practice;
- workload planning;
- debriefing discussions; and
- constructive feedback.
Here are some of the benefits supervision might have for your professional practice.
It can help you to identify and resolve problems
Supervision can provide valuable space to reflect on any tricky areas of your work. This can help you to:
- identify any issues early;
- seek advice; and
- talk through solutions in a proactive way.
It supports continuing professional development
Keeping your knowledge and skills up to date and relevant to your scope of practice is crucial to ensure you continue to practise safely and effectively. Supervision can help you to identify and respond to any learning needs or gaps, to ensure you continue to meet our standards.
It can also have a positive impact on your career progression. Supervision can help you to:
- identify professional development opportunities;
- seek support and feedback; and
- monitor your development.
If you are returning to work after a break, supervision can help you ensure that your knowledge and skills are up to date, and demonstrate that you are a safe and effective practitioner.
It’s important for professional practice
As a professional, it is important that you continue to quality assure your work. This means:
- taking the time to identify when things have gone well; and
- highlighting any areas you think you can improve on.
Reflecting on your practice has a positive impact on service users and carers by raising standards overall and improving service user safety.
Supervision can also be an effective way to address competence or conduct issues. Appropriate supervision can demonstrate insight into what has gone wrong, and that you have taken steps to avoid repeating the concerns in future. If a concern is raised with the HCPC about your fitness to practise, effective supervision can be an important mitigating factor in deciding whether your fitness to practise is impaired, and what action, if any, might be needed.
It’s a way to look after your wellbeing
Work in health and social care professions is often challenging.
Regular supervision can provide a supportive environment in which to discuss any difficulties or concerns. It can also help you to reflect on your achievements and affirm areas of positive practice too.
Approaching supervision
We do not set requirements for how you should approach supervision, or the type or amount of supervision you should complete.
We understand that access to supervision can vary across different workplaces and professions. The approach you take may depend on what supervision is available to you.
We expect you to use your professional judgement to decide what sort of supervision will be most effective for you in your practice.
This is likely to be informed by discussions with peers and your line manager. Your professional body may also have some guidance for your profession.
We have recently commissioned research to inform our understanding of effective clinical and peer supervision. We anticipate that the report will be published at the end of 2019. We will share the findings on the resources section of our website.