Field supervision entailing human services is an appropriate practice for the trainee when handling complex and ambiguous matters of humankind. The supervisor’s role is direct feedback provision, streamlining personal growth, outlining strengths and weaknesses and creating student study plans. The trainee is obligated to explore conflicting perceptions, practice critical thinking mechanisms and opening up to feedback. Despite both supervisor and trainee bearing personal responsibilities for ascertaining efficient practice, they must form a strong alliance in their relationship; supportive supervisory relationships lead to positive outcomes. On the contrary, a weak supervisory relationship creates non-disclosure, impacting the trainee’s professional growth, knowledge and skill advancement. Trainees who do not reveal their information view supervision as a process lacking professional growth hence create avoidance mechanisms (Navarrete, 2017).
A supervisor is often viewed as an individual well equipped in terms of attitudes, behaviours, skills and experience. Though the supervisor has numerous duties; administrator, educational, teacher, mediator and enabler, the supervisor has to shift roles accordingly to achieve the trainee’s demands. Moreover, supervisors have to maintain a working alliance in the context of safe supervision. The level of work expectation increases upon a supervisor entering into a supervisory involvement with a trainee. The high job demands create a conflict between the supervisor and the trainee as little time is allocated for learning and applying skills and knowledge. Supervisor trainee conflict could also arise due to the supervisor lacking sufficient knowledge and skills on conflict resolution. Supervisors have inadequate conflict management training; hence they rely on previous conflict occurrence and successful mediations for future supervisor trainee conflict resolution (Bajwa et al., 2020).
Supervisor trainee conflict could be described as supervisory activities that cause trauma or physical, psychological or emotional disturbance to a trainee. Disturbing conditions aroused on the trainee include sexual intimacy, disrespecting boundaries, demeaning, vengeful attitude, interpersonal violations, authoritative oppression, or publicly humiliating the trainee. The crucial impact of the disturbance is the effect that the trainee feels. The consequence of the conflict could be felt by the trainee for a short duration, probably a day, month or years. The contributing challenge to the violations of supervision ethics is the power supervisors have as they start supervision. Supervisors continuously misuse their positions without paying any attention to the stipulated rules and guidelines. A vital aspect in the abuse of power is the difference in power status between the supervisor and trainee. The abuse of power can lead to emotional, psychological, physical or trauma moments to the trainee due to the supervisor’s actions (Navarrete, 2017).
The impact of supervisor trainee conflict similarly affects a career development process. Negative effects likely to occur when a trainee withdraws from supervision due to the conflict could be decreased self-efficacy, safety issues, self-blame and self-doubt as a professional. Apart from trainee development issues, conflict could also create health and personal affairs such as stress, medical issues, sexual-linked issues and some exiting the profession. Since the trainee is vulnerable to psychological distress arising from the power oppression of the supervisor, then the trainee is ethically obligated to take moral actions. The trainee requires being aware of his supervision rights and become more empowered to advocate for their wellbeing. Trainee becomes empowered by recognizing unsuitable conditions that warrant open discussions or sharing emotions with other staff to assist in formulating solutions. If safety is compromised, then the trainee should seek advice from local, state or national psychological affiliations. There should also be documentation of boundary violations such as excessive touching, special treatment to gain friendship approval through gifts or jokes on attire to warrant caution to the supervisor (Jiggins & Asempapa 2016).
Dynamic transformations taking place in the supervisor trainee relationship make supervision a highly complex process. With the daily changes in trainee experiences resulting from personal progression in development, the supervisor should significantly align with the trainee’s development to sufficiently mitigate the trainee’s concerns, needs, and questions. Supervision theories and frameworks are ideal and appropriate for mainstreaming supervision. The work alliance theory acknowledges the bond, goals and tasks shared by the supervisor and trainee. Goals must be well set by both the trainee and supervisor, and agreeing on tasks at the beginning of supervision to arrive at the mutually recognized goals. The theory outlines the emotional bond required to maintain the supervision process’s consistency, providing a clear understanding and interpretation of the direction and mechanism of supervision. Integrated Developmental Framework enables the supervisor to establish the shift in trainee development progression. The framework assists in capturing trainee transformations with time as the trainee moves from one level to another (Fernandez Oromendia, 2017).
In preparing this project, I had challenges getting group six members together all at once since we are remote learners located in different time zones. Deciding on who to be the group leader was through personal email as the school email could not operate. Texting acted as the best mode of communication. We could not also easily decide on the best PowerPoint background slides and the appropriate topic of presentation. However, I believe we overcame these challenges and presented a good and visually appealing PowerPoint presentation.
References
Bajwa, N. M., Bochatay, N., Muller-Juge, V., Cullati, S., Blondon, K. S., Junod Perron, N., … & Nendaz, M. R. (2020). Intra versus interprofessional conflicts: implications for conflict management training. Journal of interprofessional care, 34(2), 259-268.
Fernandez Oromendia, M. (2017). Developing the Personal Style of the Supervisor Scale: An Evaluation of Stylistic Profiles of Clinical Supervisors (Doctoral dissertation, UC Santa Barbara).
Jiggins, K. C., & Asempapa, B. (2016). Values in the counseling profession: Unethical vs. non-maleficence. VISTAS 2016, 1-10.
Navarrete, G. A. (2017). ASSESSMENT OF SUPERVISEE CONFIDENCE TO INITIATE DISCUSSION OF HARM WITH FIELD SUPERVISOR.
