A paradigm shift in nurse specialist clinical supervision-implementation of a competence program

Abstract

The change of the anesthesia-, intensive-, surgery-, and oncological nursing postgraduate education into clinical-oriented master programs makes it necessary to increase the professional skills of nurse specialist clinical supervisors. A competence program for clinical supervisors (15 credits) was developed by a university in Norway from 2014 to 2015 in order to facilitate capacity building of academic and pedagogical knowledge. To illuminate nurse specialist clinical supervisors’ learning components by implementing a competence program in clinical supervision. A qualitative document analysis of 44 written assignments made by 18 nurse specialist clinical supervisors participating in the competence program, which were collected from the University’s electronic learning platform. One main theme and two themes emerged: Changes in the professional paradigm, Learning components that influence clinical supervisors’ style and Learning components that have an impact on clinical supervisors’ professional growth. This study provides valuable insight into the learning components in clinical supervision that have contributed to a change in the nurse specialist clinical supervision paradigm. The supervisors have formal competence to provide clinical supervision to postgraduate students at master level. The program confirms the value of educating nurse specialist clinical supervisors and we recommend that it should be continued and further evaluated.