Leadership and supervision

Previous articles in this series explored visionary leadership, the differences between management and various styles of leadership, succession planning, the use of mentorship within leadership and some practical ideas on dealing with and managing stress as a leader. This article examines the importance of supervision within leadership. If I asked you the question of who supervises your work, what would your answer be? How easy was it for you to identify the person who supervises your work? Did you identify one person or several depending on what aspect of work you were undertaking?

The question of who supervises your work is one that I often ask groups of qualified nurses when I'm running workshops on supervision and management. The answers I receive vary, from the instant recall of a specific individual to an acknowledgement that many nurses work in a way that any overt supervision by an individual is difficult to identify. In medicine and other allied health care professions, the line of supervision is far more obvious in its appearance, based on job titles. A senior physiotherapist supervises a basic grade and a consultant doctor supervises registrars etc. In hospital-based general nursing, the workforce is more diverse; a single ward can have 30 or 40 different staff covering the 24-hour period, with great variation in individual experience, qualifications and competency. Dental nursing, be it community or hospital based, tends to be organised in smaller teams and has fairly clear lines of authority and communication, thus avoiding some of the intrinsic difficulties of supervision of hospital general nurses. However, dental nursing has its own challenges regarding supervision. Dental nurses tend to work clinically on a one-to-one basis with a dentist rather than with another dental nurse. If you work in one of the larger dental practices or a multi-site practice, then there will be greater rotation of dental nurses around the various treatment areas. Your dental practice may be well staffed and able to cover staff sickness from your existing nursing team. If not, you may rely occasionally on agency dental nurses to cover a single shift or several weeks of work. However your practice is organised, and each practice will have its own challenges regarding supervision of the more junior or agency dental nurses. Supervision needs to be organised and structured if it is to be a constructive process.