REVISITING COMPETENCE IN CLINICAL SUPERVISION

Abstract

Competency-based approaches have been advocated in psychology graduate education and clinical training for over two decades, paralleling developments in medicine and other health professions. The competencies movement aimed at bringing greater accountability to the healthcare professions and to provide society with competent health service providers. Competency-based approaches to clinical supervision, including competency-based clinical supervision [1], [2] were developed to ensure the well-being of clients, facilitate the development of clinical competence, and protect the public. Although more than 6000 articles and books were published on clinical supervision from 2003-2021, relatively few explicitly focus on competence or competency-based approaches. And in practice, it appears that broad-based and systematic implementation of competency-based approaches has not been accomplished. The authors suggest that the failure to implement competency-based clinical supervision has significant consequences on mental health services. Effective, evidence-based services are critically needed given the increasing mental health acuity. The provision of evidence-based treatments requires the ’training-up’ of clinicians to establish competence in evidence-informed psychotherapy and psychosocial interventions. Developing competence would be best achieved through the use of competency-based approaches to training and clinical supervision. Barriers to implementation are discussed and a renewed call for implementation, including increased empirical research, is made.