Clinical supervision in community psychiatric nursing

Abstract

By the early 1980s research into community psychiatric nursing was beginning to highlight a need for a more theoretically-based, universal approach to community care, flexible enough to accommodate a variety of therapeutic interventions. As yet, the search for such an approach has proved difficult, the main stumbling blocks being the variety of skills employed by Community Psychiatric Nurses (CPNs), further complicated by the wide range of mental health problems which they encounter. How can a model of nursing, which a psychodynamically-orientated CPN is using to treat someone with a marital problem, be used just as effectively by a CPN with behavioural skills whose client is complaining of adverse side-effects from his depot injection? What is needed is a common language to describe practice, recognizable by all CPNs, no matter which way they choose to work. The intention of this chapter is to propose a model of supervision, which can provide a theoretical base to underpin all CPN interventions and also be utilized as a resource for evaluating action.