Disciplinary supervision following ethics complaints: goals, tasks, and ethical dimensions

Clinical supervision is considered an integral component of the training of psychologists, and most of the professional literature is focused on this type of supervision. But psychologists also may supervise fully credentialed colleagues in other circumstances. One such context occurs when licensing boards mandate supervision as part of a disciplinary order. When supervision is provided in disciplinary cases, there are significant implications for the ethical dimensions of the supervisory relationship and concomitant ethical challenges for supervisors. Not only are the goals, objectives, and supervisory tasks of disciplinary supervision distinct from other types of supervision, but the supervisor's ethical responsibilities also encompass unique dimensions. Competence, informed consent, boundaries, confidentiality, and documentation are examined. Recommendations for reports to licensing boards include a statement of the clinical or ethical problems instigating discipline, description of how these problems have been addressed, and an assessment of the supervisee's current practices and ability to perform competently.

Inadequate and Harmful Clinical Supervision

Two studies were conducted to revise and empirically test Ellis’s framework for inadequate and harmful supervision, and to determine the occurrence of inadequate and harmful clinical supervision from the supervisees’ perspective. For Study 1, we delineated 10 criteria for minimally adequate clinical supervision and defined inadequate and harmful supervision by differentiating self-identified and de facto supervision for each. Ratings from 34 supervision experts were used to generate a taxonomy of 16 de facto inadequate and 21 de facto harmful supervision descriptors. Because harmful supervision was distinct from, yet subsumed by, inadequate supervision, we revised the taxonomy and definitions accordingly. In Study 2, the occurrence of inadequate and harmful supervision was assessed for 363 supervisees; 93.0% were currently receiving inadequate supervision and 35.3% were currently receiving harmful supervision. Over half of the supervisees had received harmful clinical supervision at some point. Implications for research, training, and practice are discussed.

What Helps and What Hinders in Cross-Cultural Clinical Supervision

This study investigated what helped and what hindered in cross-cultural supervision. The participants were 25 visible minority graduate students and early counseling professionals. They were individually interviewed according to an expanded version of Flanagan’s critical incident technique. The most frequently cited positive themes were subsumed in five key areas: (a) personal attributes of the supervisor, (b) supervision competencies, (c) mentoring, (d) relationship, and (e) multicultural supervision competencies. The most frequently reported negative themes were grouped into five areas: (a) personal difficulties as a visible minority, (b) negative personal attributes of the supervisor, (c) lack of a safe and trusting relationship, (d) lack of multicultural supervision competencies, and (e) lack of supervision competencies. The results support a person-centered mentoring model of effective supervision.

Multicultural Clinical Supervision and Benchmarks

The purpose of this Major Contribution is to provide background knowledge and context for competency-based clinical supervision and to showcase a diversity of methodologically sound empirical approaches to study effective supervision, including multiculturally competent supervision, and comparative perspectives on supervision cross-culturally. The intent is to begin to provide the empirical data necessary to assist the supervisor in supporting supervisees’ development of the benchmark competencies and to provide direction for future training of supervisors. Specifically, the articles in this major contribution address competencies in clinical supervision and the Competency Benchmarks on three pivotal topics: empirical support defining effective supervision, innovative empirically based approaches to cross-cultural and international supervision, and an empirical analysis of feminist supervision in a multiculturally diverse group context. Each of the articles addresses particular Competency Benchmarks and provides prototypical models of rigorous research procedures to inform the practice of multicultural supervision and training of supervisors, and implications.