Allyson Davys, Christa Fouche & Liz Beddoe, “Mapping Effective Interprofessional Supervision Practice”

This article is useful to clinics with lawyers, social workers, community legal workers, or other interdisciplinary environments in which a person from one profession acts as a supervisor for a person from another profession. Interdisciplinary supervision can be highly impactful and expand knowledge and critical thinking, improve service provision, and diversify approaches for supervisor and supervisee and for the organization as a whole; however, there are several challenges worth considering. The authors note the “continuum” of professional cultures in the degree to which they value “management monitoring” versus “therapeutic use of self” (p 180). Other key differences include different understandings of the role and approach to supervision:

“in some professions, supervision is structured as a hierarchical activity, involving evaluation, monitoring, and education, and is required only for students and new graduates to ensure the development of safe and competent practice. Meanwhile, other professions regard supervision as a feature of career-long learning and reflection regularly accessed regardless of the professional’s experience, role, or seniority (Davys & Beddoe, 2010). In these situations, whether internal or external to the organization, the supervision participants remain accountable to their respective organizational and professional standards and policies but the supervision itself does not include routine assessment or monitoring.” (180)

These approaches change the nature of supervision both for the supervisor and the supervisee. The authors develop a “Map for Interprofessional Supervision”, reproduced below.

Allyson Davys, Christa Fouche & Liz Beddoe, “Mapping Effective Interprofessional Supervision Practice” (2021) 40:2 Clinical Supervisor 179.