Lynsay OT Supervisor (00:01) Welcome to the OT Supervision podcast. Pull up a chair, grab a cuppa and let's chat. It's so nice to be here with you today. I'm Lindsay, OT Supervisor, and I wanted to chat to you about supervision and why do we need it? I think it's really important that we take some time to reflect on this because it's something that we just do in practice. Every student who comes on placement will engage in supervision, support staff engage in supervision and every qualified member of the team will be expected to engage in supervision. But do you ever take any time to think about why we need to do that? So yeah, obviously let's start with the things, the reasons we are told to do it. So we have obviously statutory requirements as healthcare professionals. So we will be asked by the HCPC, so the Healthcare Professions Council, to undergo supervision. That is part of our registration requirement and rightly so, 100%. Under Royal College of Occupational Therapists, if you're listening internationally, your own registration professional body will have expectations for you around supervision, although they may call it something different internationally. It's often called mentorship. or you might undergo coaching for your professional skills. But there is an expectation within our statutory organisations and registration bodies that we undergo some form of supervision. And supervision, yes, is key in terms of safety to practice. We want to make sure that whatever we're doing under our protected title as occupational therapists, that we are doing it appropriately. and that we have the best interests of our clients, our service users. That is our aim to deliver high quality therapy, assessment and intervention and advice to them. So supervision is a part of that kind of governance aspect. People look at it as a governance thing, it's something... where a senior member of your team or staff will check in with you to make sure that you're kind of doing all the right things. And supervision can very much feel like that, a bit of a kind of checklist. Have you talked about your caseload? Have you got your goals written? How are your reports on time? How are you managing your time? Are you prioritising properly? And sometimes we find that's where supervision actually gets stuck. And I would... encourage you to question if it gets stuck there, how does that help with your professional and personal development? And I think it doesn't really. So I would say supervision is way more than that governance piece. It's an important part, but there's way more to supervision than just governance. So why do you want it? Have you ever thought about that? Have you taken a moment to think, what do I want to get out of supervision? 03:05 Beyond Governance: Personal and Professional Development before you have your first supervision session with a new supervisor, do you have that thought and do you have that conversation? And I would really encourage you if you don't, to do that, to start doing that. And even if you've been working with someone for ages and ages in your supervision relationship and you haven't had that conversation yet, I would take a pause and go, is there a space for us at some point to have that conversation about what I want to get out of supervision? Because I think it's a really important conversation. Supervision is so much wider than just that governance piece, that kind of clinical checklist, that service checklist to make sure you're meeting appropriate standards supervision should be about supporting your personal and professional development. Looking at how CPD fits into your personal and professional development. Taking care of your wellbeing. Are you taking care of yourself? Is the system supporting you to take care of yourself? How do you manage the complex relationships that as therapists we engage with, not just with our clients, with their carers or family, but with our colleagues and the wider multidisciplinary team or within our own OT service. It's really important that we're looking at all of those relationship pieces because they absolutely impact what we do in our practice. We've got CPD and I don't mean CPD just an went on a course and yeah that was really helpful and I think it will help me do x y and z. We should be stopping and looking at CPD within supervision as part of that career journey. Where am I now in my career? Where do I want to get to and how can the CPD I engage in help me do that? So they're really important aspects. We want to make space to look at supervision in a more holistic way. And I like to think about supervision and supervision skills as something that actually we need to learn and we need to give CBD time to because essentially it's like taking the OT process out of the clinical aspect and bring it into that supervisory relationship. You know, we would meet our clients where they're at all of the time. We're creative. We can adapt, we're good at reviewing and we can be really holistic when our service allows us the opportunity to do that. So why don't we do that in supervision for each other? Why don't we take that OT process into the supervisory space, use supervision skills to elicit that journey with our supervisees and really give the opportunity for growth? 05:39 Creating Space for Growth in Supervision Because for me, for supervision to be the cornerstone of our professional development, we need to make sure that we create space for growth. Not just for clinical reason, not just for reflective practice, not just for in the moment times, but for growth over time. We'd start supervision as students. We continue supervision. Or if you're an apprentice, you've been a support worker. all the way through, whether you're a qualified or an unqualified member of the team, supervision is there. But it's there throughout our whole career journeys. So in order for it to support our whole career journey, we should always be looking a little bit forward as well. Not just in the moment, not just dealing with what's happening right now, moving from one week to one week, one month to one month. We need to be looking a bit further to really support our overall professional development. I believe that supervision for us is the right space to do that in and it's really important that we pause and think about, what is supervision doing for me now? What would I like supervision to do for me next? And actually, how will it help me get to where I want to be in my career? And yes, you might just be looking to the next chapter, but that's okay. We want to be looking beyond the immediate now because that's when supervision can be really effective. So I really want you to take this opportunity to think about what supervision means to you, to reflect on the experiences that you've had, but also to think about what you might want from it and then to take some action. So my takeaway from today would be for you to think about, I'm going to create 15 minutes. That's all I'm asking you to do. Find 15 minutes of your time to sit down and do a brainstorm around what does supervision mean to me now? What am I getting from supervision now? What would I like to have in supervision? How can supervision support my career goals? And what action am I going to take? Who am I going to talk to about it? And how am I going to approach that conversation? So those are the takeaways today. A little bit of reflective work for you to do to just check in and see if supervision is giving you what you need and is supporting you in a holistic way. to help your professional growth across your career journey. I'd love to hear what you have to think about that. If you've any comments, if you've got any reflections you're willing to share, I'm always happy to chat. So reach out, send me a message, comment here and I will be able to answer you. And take that little bit of time, just 15 minutes, find it somewhere just to sit down, maybe grab another cuppa if you've got time now and do it while it's fresh in your mind. or if you're out on a walk or you're driving in the car maybe you've got a note taker that you can speak into and just do it now while it's fresh in your mind but until next time and take care of yourself and I look forward to chatting to you again soon