Promoting nursing quality through supervision.

Abstract

This article discusses the concept and content of supervision and related forms of staff training. Of special concern is the implementation of supervision in nursing organizations and its role in promoting nursing quality. Finally, the article looks at the future prospects of supervision and the need for further development. In Finland, supervision was first introduced as a method of staff training in the 1960s, but it is only during the past decade or so that it has been adopted on a wider scale in different fields of health care. Recently, there has been increasing debate on the definition of the concept, on its content, and on how supervision should be distinguished from other forms of staff training. Critics are saying that existing conceptual analyses are superficial and remain surrounded by considerable ambiguity. In the practice of nursing supervision, the emphasis is often too heavily on the problems of nursing practice. As a result, any creative new ideas on the part of the supervised employee are easily ignored. Every effort should now be made to develop a more accurate and comprehensive definition of supervision by closely comparing supervision with related forms of staff training, many of which differ from supervision only marginally in terms of, say, goals and contents. Supervision is here compared with consultation, hierarchic supervision, guidance, and therapy.