Using clinical supervision to improve the quality and safety of patient care: a response to Berwick and Francis

BACKGROUND: After widely publicised investigations into excess patient deaths at Mid Staffordshire hospital the UK government commissioned reports from Robert Francis QC and Professor Don Berwick. Among their recommendations to improve the quality and safety of patient care were lifelong learning, professional support and ‘just culture’. Clinical supervision is in an excellent position to support these activities but opportunities are in danger of being squeezed out by regulatory and managerial demands. Doctors who have completed their training are responsible for complex professional judgements for which narrative supervision is particularly helpful. With reference to the literature and my own practice I propose that all practicing clinicians should have regular clinical supervision. DISCUSSION: Clinical supervision has patient-safety and the quality of patient care as its primary purposes. After training is completed, doctors may practice for the rest of their career without any clinical supervision, the implication being that the difficulties dealt with in clinical supervision are no longer difficulties, or are better dealt with some other way. Clinical supervision is sufficiently flexible to be adapted to the needs of experienced clinicians as its forms can be varied, though its functions remain focused on patient safety, good quality clinical care and professional wellbeing. SUMMARY: The evidence linking clinical supervision to the quality and safety of patient care reveals that supervision is most effective when its educational and supportive functions are separated from its managerial and evaluative functions. Among supervision’s different forms, narrative-based-supervision is particularly useful as it has been developed for clinicians who have completed their training. It provides ways to explore the complexity of clinical judgements and encourages doctors to question one another’s authority in a supportive culture. To be successful, supervision should also be professionally led and learner centred rather than externally imposed and centred on institutions. I propose that regular clinical supervision should be a professional requirement if the quality and safety aspirations of Francis and Berwick are to be met.