Effective supervision in clinical practice settings: a literature review

CONTEXT: Clinical supervision has a vital role in postgraduate and, to some extent, undergraduate medical education. However it is probably the least investigated, discussed and developed aspect of clinical education. This large-scale, interdisciplinary review of literature addressing supervision is the first from a medical education perspective. PURPOSE: To review the literature on effective supervision in practice settings in order to identify what is known about effective supervision. CONTENT: The empirical basis of the literature is discussed and the literature reviewed to identify understandings and definitions of supervision and its purpose; theoretical models of supervision; availability, structure and content of supervision; effective supervision; skills and qualities of effective supervisors; and supervisor training and its effectiveness. CONCLUSIONS: The evidence only partially answers our original questions and suggests others. The supervision relationship is probably the single most important factor for the effectiveness of supervision, more important than the supervisory methods used. Feedback is essential and must be clear. It is important that the trainee has some control over and input into the supervisory process. Finding sufficient time for supervision can be a problem. Trainee behaviours and attitudes towards supervision require more investigation; some behaviours are detrimental both to patient care and learning. Current supervisory practice in medicine has very little empirical or theoretical basis. This review demonstrates the need for more structured and methodologically sound programmes of research into supervision in practice settings so that detailed models of effective supervision can be developed and thereby inform practice.     

Quality of life and leisure participation in children with neurodevelopmental disabilities: a thematic analysis of the literature

Purpose  

The aim of this systematic review was to document evidence of the association between leisure participation and quality of life (QoL) in children with neurodevelopmental disabilities, and to identify the main factors that further clarify this relationship.     

An exploration of person-centred concepts in human services: A thematic analysis of the literature

Being ‘person-centred’ in the delivery of health and human services has become synonymous with quality care, and it is a core feature of policy reform in Australia and other Western countries. This research aimed to identify the uses, definitions and characteristics of the term ‘person-centred’ in the ageing, mental health and disability literature. A thematic analysis identified seven common core themes of person-centredness: honouring the person, being in relationship, facilitating participation and engagement, social inclusion/citizenship, experiencing compassionate love, being strengths/capacity focussed, and organisational characteristics. These suggest a set of higher-order experiences for people that are translated differently in different human services. There is no common definition of what it means to be person-centred, despite being a core feature of contemporary health and human service policy, and this suggests that its inclusion facilitates further misunderstanding and misinterpretation. A common understanding and policy conceptualisation of person-centredness is likely to support quality outcomes in service delivery especially where organisations work across human service groups. Further research into the application and service expressions of being ‘person-centred’ in context is necessary.     

Understanding quality of life across different clinical subtypes of multiple sclerosis: a thematic analysis

Quality of Life Research - Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a neurological disease that has different clinical presentations and illness trajectories. The aim of this study was to explore factors that...     

Narratives of harmful clinical supervision: Introduction to the Special Issue

ABSTRACT

Despite the ethical mandate “do no harm,” harmful clinical supervision seems to be occurring internationally among mental health disciplines at an alarming rate. Harmful supervision appears to be largely unacknowledged, unrecognized, and not understood, especially from the supervisees’ perspective. This Special Issue presents 11 anonymous narratives written by supervisees across four mental health disciplines and four continents, plus three reaction articles from supervision experts. The introduction article delineates the rationale for and procedures utilized in obtaining the narratives. The closing article synthesizes the Special Issue contributions, offering conclusions, implications, and recommendations to address harmful supervision systemically across disciplines and internationally.     

Health professionals’ adherence to stroke clinical guidelines: A review of the literature

Background

The process of implementation of clinical guidelines i.e. getting guidelines into practice has been extensively reviewed and meta-reviewed from a generic perspective. However, in relation to stroke care, there has been no review of these studies to date, although implementing stroke clinical guidelines is a topic of great interest within the stroke literature. This review aims to identify stroke studies that have addressed adherence to generic and specific stroke care clinical guidelines.

Method

A computer search was conducted using PubMed, CINAHL, PsychINFO, Web of Science and the Cochrane Systematic Reviews databases. Search terms included those relevant to the implementation of stroke clinical guidelines. We assessed all studies retrieved against specific inclusion criteria and collated only those studies that emphasized adherence to stroke clinical guidelines.

Results

Eighty-eight articles were selected for further review from 153 articles retrieved. Of those, 27 were studies on adherence to stroke clinical guidelines and were included in this review – 16 were categorized as generic stroke guidelines and 11 were on specific aspects of stroke care. Each category was further divided into studies that assessed adherence to stroke guidelines only and those that intervened to improve adherence. Adherence was generally greater for studies that included an intervention. Specific stroke care guidelines were poorly adhered to compared to generic stroke guidelines but these studies were better at identifying organizational and team barriers to implementation. Most studies conducted audits of patient medical records and a limited number assessed health professionals’ views or used a behavioural framework to assess adherence.

Discussion

Adherence to stroke guidelines varied in the studies reviewed. Given the evidence that implementation of clinical guidelines in stroke care leads to better quality of care and improved health outcomes for patients, there is a need to increase adherence behaviours of health professionals towards recommended guidelines, in particular for long term stroke care.     

A flexible unified approach to the analysis of pre‐clinical combination studies

Combinations of drugs are increasingly being used in a variety of diseases. Pre‐clinical experiments allow the responses of many drug compounds to be studied in combination with the goal of identifying compounds acting synergistically. This paper presents a unified approach to analysing data from combination studies, calculating a hierarchy of interaction indices to powerfully and flexibly describe the synergistic profile of the combination space studied, utilizing standard statistical software to generate estimates of confidence and provide statistical tests. The approach can work with a wide variety of experimental designs and response patterns and will deal with partial responses and inactive compounds. As well as identifying synergy or antagonism, the same approach can also be used to identify a benefit or detriment to monotherapy. The approach is illustrated with data from an in vitro study. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Supervisor assessment of clinical and professional competence of medical trainees: a reliability study using workplace data and a focused analytical literature review

Even though rater-based judgements of clinical competence are widely used, they are context sensitive and vary between individuals and institutions. To deal adequately with rater-judgement unreliability, evaluating the reliability of workplace rater-based assessments in the local context is essential. Using such an approach, the primary intention of this study was to identify the trainee score variation around supervisor ratings, identify sampling number needs of workplace assessments for certification of competence and position the findings within the known literature. This reliability study of workplace-based supervisors’ assessments of trainees has a rater-nested-within-trainee design. Score variation attributable to the trainee for each competency item assessed (variance component) were estimated by the minimum-norm quadratic unbiased estimator. Score variance was used to estimate the number needed for a reliability value of 0.80. The trainee score variance for each of 14 competency items varied between 2.3% for emergency skills to 35.6% for communication skills, with an average for all competency items of 20.3%; the “Overall rating” competency item trainee variance was 28.8%. These variance components translated into 169, 7, 17 and 28 assessments needed for a reliability of 0.80, respectively. Most variation in assessment scores was due to measurement error, ranging from 97.7% for emergency skills to 63.4% for communication skills. Similar results have been demonstrated in previously published studies. In summary, overall supervisors’ workplace based assessments have poor reliability and are not suitable for use in certification processes in their current form. The marked variation in the supervisors’ reliability in assessing different competencies indicates that supervisors may be able to assess some with acceptable reproducibility; in this case communication and possibly overall competence. However, any continued use of this format for assessment of trainee competencies necessitates the identification of what supervisors in different institutions can reliably assess rather than continuing to impose false expectations from unreliable assessments.