HOW NOT TO DO CLINICAL SUPERVISION IN NURSING

The widespread nursing interpretation of clinical supervision followin g the accepted definitions of Butterworth and Faugier, elides refineme nt of boundaries between personal and professional development and gro wth. In so doing, nursing interpretation confuses the differences betw een two similar processes and ultimately distorts the purpose of clini cal supervision. Ln nursing supervision, the patient can become lost, thus perpetuating the avoidance of anxiety in intimate therapeutic wor k, originally described by Menzies in 1959. While a tension naturally exists between the two processes, this paper demonstrates the utter im portance of working within the tension of boundaries that define the t riadic situation of supervisor, supervisee and patient. When supervisi on is accepted as personal development, the triadic situation may dete riorate into a dyadic one between supervisor and supervisee only, sign ificantly altering the relationship to the point where the supervisee becomes a patient. Parallel process, ordinarily reflecting the therape utic nurse-patient relationship in the supervisory one, may then becom e merely a process running parallel to the supervisee, while utilizing the patient as a source of material for personal growth. This paper d emonstrates through Faugier's casework material the necessity of defin ing boundaries and the difficulties associated in maintaining them, ra ther than prosaically declaring that 'supervision is not therapy'.