Clinical Supervision

To a great extent clinical supervision is similar to any other type of supervision. It involves the strategic management of labour resources within healthcare. According to Reid and Silver (2013, pg 129), clinical supervisors are often professionals in the discipline of nurse administration. Skinner and Wrycraft (2014, pg 235) point out that the subject of clinical supervision gained much popularity in the past decade. Its introduction can be traced back to the early 1990’s. It provides a means through which strategy can be developed with the intention of improving healthcare delivery. Through the effective management of healthcare staff health care institutions are able to present quality care whilst using the minimum amount of resources necessary.

The role of clinical supervision is to provide a larger channel of available expertise in which other members of healthcare institutions can benefit from. It includes the individuals who restrict others from engaging in unauthorized activities and mentorship figures (Caras, & Sandu, 2014, p.75). In the context of clinical supervision within a hospice environment, the emotional investment of medical practitioners is an important matter. According to (Munson and Munson 2002, pg 380), attending to people within a health facility can be emotionally challenging, patients are often in a fragile emotional state and this particularly affects their friends and family. Healing is a process, besides the pharmaceutical remedies that are prescribed to a patient one needs emotional support. Clinical supervision intends to provide emotional support and reduce the burden on affected people by giving a service where recommendations are based on expert knowledge as much as possible (Hill, 2014, p.277). The effect of improving the lives of patients is most evidently seen through the responses of relatives who accompany

The role of supervision must be balanced with the underling purpose of nursing to facilitate treatment and disease management. Supervision reveals the existence of needs and causes a supervisor to engage in normal day to day activities so as to ensure quality performance and service provision (Spector-Bagdady, 2015, p.568). It would be difficult for a hospice supervisor to be ignorant or refuse to assist nurses and other medical attendants where there is a need. One reason for supervision is to improve performance; therefore, engaging in service supervision is a vital factor in the success of care delivery. The separation of supervision from normal workplace roles is difficult as it could require that one becomes naïve of the true reasons for engaging in their role. The introduction of clinical supervision within a hospice environment requires observation of a delicate process. Such a process begins with the raising of awareness, teaching others about the importance of clinical supervision to the practice and patience, letting known the rewards that will accompany performance, gradual introduction of policy, evaluation of supervision, receiving of feedback and ultimately, compiling findings (Martin, Copley, & Tyack, 2014,