Current Trends Concerning Supervisors, Supervisees, and Clients in Clinical Supervision

What do clinical supervision research reviews tell us? Surveying the last 25 years

“…Data support the supervisor–supervisee relationship, perhaps the most substantial ‘inside’ matter, as being integral to fostering supervisee change (Carifio & Hess, ; Ellis, ; Park, Ha, Lee, Lee, & Lee, ). Data further suggest that supervision positively impacts supervisees, resulting in such gains as enhanced self‐awareness, enhanced self‐efficacy and enhanced skill acquisition (Goodyear & Guzzardo, ; Inman et al, ; Wheeler & Richards, ). But research supporting supervision's impact on skill transfer remains limited, as does research addressing supervision's impact on client outcomes.…”

“…The current state of supervision research can be compared to psychotherapy research in the 1950s or 1960s: measurement and effectiveness issues loom large as major concerns (Milne et al, ). It remains the case that ‘…although our knowledge and understanding of supervision has bourgeoned…, that which we do not understand or understand well continues to be vast’ (Inman et al, , p. 86). Hampering that understanding, supervision research has often been, and continues to be, criticised for the following reasons: small sample sizes, over‐reliance on self‐report measures, limited number of valid supervision measures, ex post facto designs, limited attention to client outcomes and lack of longitudinal data (Ellis, D’Iuso, & Ladany, ; Ellis & Ladany, ; Hill & Knox, ; Russell, Crimmings, & Lent, ).…”

“…Supervision research has been around for over 60 years now, and its importance for the field's advancement has been increasingly recognised (Inman et al, ). As supervision studies have continued to accumulate and supervision has acquired greater empirical mass, supervision research reviews have become ever more common fare.…”

“…WATKINS and enhanced skill acquisition (Goodyear & Guzzardo, 2000;Inman et al, 2014;Wheeler & Richards, 2007). But research supporting supervision's impact on skill transfer remains limited, as does research addressing supervision's impact on client outcomes.…”

Toward a research-informed, evidence-based psychoanalytic supervision

“…But research where supervisor -supervisee outcome is examined can perhaps be seen as an intermediate step, with the guiding assumption being: By better understanding and working to improve what transpires between supervisor and supervisee, the probability of ultimately having favorable impact upon the therapist/patient interaction and inducing favorable patient changes can accordingly be substantially increased. Thus far, supervision research has overwhelmingly suggested that the process of supervision can prove of great benefit to supervisees (Inman et al, 2014). These supervisor -supervisee outcome studies can ideally serve as an instructive building block from which reasoned and reasonable extrapolations can seemingly be made.…”