Introduction This section of the site provides a brief introduction to clinical supervision. It provides a useful starting point to the site and some foundations from which nurses may begin to think about some of the relevant issues. Clinical supervision is a broad concept, having been adopted and integrated into many helping professions.
Definitions tend to delimit the boundaries, range, role and depth of supervision.
As to the content of clinical supervision, this tends to be informed by its area of application as supervision of a specific mode of intervention may encompass some didactic teaching of skills central to that application. In nursing, clinical supervision definitions tend to encompass aspects of learning, interpersonal support and oversight - however, not all authors agree on this basic summation. The UKCC has acknowledged the need for a range of models to address the diversity of practice within nursing. Most models do, however, tend to encompass the above dimensions. Differences in emphasis upon each of the elements may be in evidence according to the issue presented, the developmental level of the supervisor and supervisee, their career stage, the model of nursing and supervision used and extraneous factors imposing upon the relationship.