Becoming a Reflective Practitioner, 6th Edition

CHAPTER 22A System to Enable Practitioners to Develop Personal Mastery Towards Realising Their Vision of Practice

Christopher Johns

Guided reflection is both a system to enable practitioners to ensure the quality of their practice and to develop personal mastery towards realising their vision of practice. In healthcare organisations guided reflection is commonly referred to as clinical supervision. Clinical supervision burst upon the general nursing agenda in 1993, prompted by the Government’s concern for greater professional accountability and surveillance to give the public confidence that nurses and health visitors’ practice would be adequately monitored in the aftermath of the Beverly Allitt tragedy.

The Vision for the Future document (National Health Services Management Executive 1993, p. 3) defined clinical supervision as:

a formal process of professional support and learning which enables individual practitioners to develop knowledge and competence, assume responsibility for their own practice and enhance consumer protection and safety of care in complex situations. It is central to the process of learning and to the expansion of the scope of practice and should be seen as a means of encouraging self‐assessment and analytical and reflective skills.

The omission of sustaining performance within the clinical supervision definition is an oversight given the stressful nature of the everyday practice. Recent surveys indicate¹ low morale and unsatisfactory working conditions ...