Clinical supervision for nurses in the HIV sector

Judith Gorst: Prahran Market Clinic, Victoria

Introduction

Clinical supervision is not the norm for people working in nursing, though it is well established in mental health nursing.[1] There is a general assumption that nurses and doctors have the capacity to push on through, regardless of what they may endure at work. This notion may have developed because health workers’ traditional working environment has been in acute settings with a constant flow of patients. Hence this is the first, formative environment to which all health-care professionals are exposed. The provision of a time and space to discuss, reflect and question the care being provided and the personal impact of the work may seem unrealistic and is certainly not part of the cultural norm. Health-care professionals frequently conduct conversations about patient management but the nature of these discussions tends to be linear, direct and solution-focused, not reflective.