CLINICAL SUPERVISION - TIME TO RECONSTRUCT OR TO RETRENCH

Clinical supervision has always been important, but latterly the heigh tened demands for more trainees, effective continuing professional dev elopment, quality services and accreditation make it a topic for serio us scrutiny. The present paper summarizes the structures, processes an d outcomes that 10 NHS professions use to respond to this demand in re lation to initial professional training. It does this by placing them in the context of the professional debate on balancing the traditional emphasis on supervision quality with the increasing quantity of those requiring supervision. The findings, based on scrutiny of each profes sion's placement and supervision documentation, indicate significant v ariability in the quality standards between the professions. Implicati ons are drawn for reconstructing clinical supervision, based on the li terature and a composite of the best quality standards in the professi ons. (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.