Clinical supervision in a UK military Department of Community Mental Health

Objectives Recent service developments in the NHS on the provision of talking therapies such as the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) initiative have made the compliance with clinical supervision (CS) inherent among its service guidelines. This paper presents the findings of an audit, measuring compliance with CS among clinicians providing psychological therapies within a military Department of Community Mental Health. Method Adherence to the recommended monthly supervision and the presence of an indate CS contract were audited on two separate occasions over 2 years by analysing the departmental electronic CS database. Results Compliance rates were found to be lower than the Defence guidelines, which are already modest in their expectations compared with IAPT CS standards. Discussion Potential reasons are hypothesised including high levels of staff rotation, other military commitments, clinicians not keeping up-to-date records and the pressures of meeting performance indicators on other clinical issues. Proposals for improving the uptake of CS are suggested along with areas for further research.