Competency‐based Clinical Supervision: Status, Opportunities, Tensions, and the Future

Abstract

Although competency‐based clinical supervision has been adopted in many international clinical training settings, acceptance has been variable with scholarly opinion outpacing actual practice. The transtheoretical molecular model, as articulated by Gonsalvez and Calvert (2014), offers a structure for advancing competency‐based supervision and an important contribution, providing for definition of content and processes implicit in supervision practice. Barriers to implementation of competency‐based supervision include lack of consensus on effective supervision practices, lack of empirical support for the model, and an absence of systematic training in clinical supervision during the training trajectory. However, the competency‐based model, when implemented with fidelity to an explicit approach with designated competencies (Falender & Shafranske, 2017; Gonsalvez & Calvert, 2014) provides essential components for implementation. These include supervisee and supervisor self‐assessment of competence as a platform for goal setting, establishment of a collaborative supervisory relationship through this process, attention to the power differential implicit in the relationship, with a promise of transparency in feedback provided through competence assessment and monitoring, attention to diversity and multicultural personal factors, and ethical, legal, and regulatory factors. The process of supervision enhances the supervisee's metacompetence, or awareness of what he/she knows and does not know, and skill development through systematic targeted monitoring and feedback. However, significant tensions arise in balancing multiple supervisor roles and responsibilities involving multicultural and global competence. Steps are proposed to advance supervisor competence within competency‐based supervision and the requisite practices are identified that define it as a model for future study and empirical analysis of supervision efficacy.

Key words:

• clinical supervision
• competency‐based
• competency‐based clinical supervision
• competency‐based supervision
• supervision training
• supervisor competence