What is clinical case supervision for psychologists?

A type of service that is in great demand by psychologists, regardless of their level of experience.

The world of psychology and mental health in general is founded on knowledge of all kinds, both theoretical and practical, and is part of what makes this field of work fascinating.

However, this also means that, from the practitioner's point of view, there can always be doubts and obstacles that make it difficult to know what to do. Especially in the area of psychotherapy, it is not uncommon to encounter new situations or unexpected problems.

This is precisely why there is supervision for psychologistsThis is a very common service among professionals or teams of experienced psychologists who combine their regular tasks with sessions to help other colleagues. Here we will see what they consist of.

What is clinical case supervision in psychology?

The supervision of clinical cases, as its name indicates, are processes in which a professional of psychological intervention in patients advises another to help him/her to manage a specific case that he/she is taking care of in his/her office.

These supervision sessions can be carried out punctually (in a single session) or with a certain periodicity to follow up on a case at a given time. to follow up on a case over the course of days. On the other hand, it is often possible to do it not only face-to-face, but also online.

This is not an improvised service, but many psychologists have already developed a specific way of offering this service to colleagues, so that they have the necessary experience and preparation to help whoever needs it.

Do only novice psychologists need it?

The answer to this question is no: any professional, regardless of his or her degree of experience, may on certain occasions need the supervision of other psychologists to know how to manage a specific case. to know how to manage a specific case. At the end of the day, psychotherapy is such a complex process that no one ever fully controls what happens in it (for better and for worse), which means that there is always room for learning.

Moreover, sometimes the problem is not a lack of theoretical and practical knowledge, but the need for an external agent who is able to analyze in a more objective way how the therapeutic bond has been developing.

Objectives of supervision for psychologists

The main objectives of supervision of clinical cases in psychology are the following.

1. Resolving doubts

Especially at the beginning of the intervention processes in the clinical setting, as well as in the phases of evaluation of the progress made by the patient, some psychotherapists have specific doubts that they do not know how to resolve on their own, referring to very specific gaps in their knowledge.. It should not be forgotten that a lot of information on mental health research is published every year, and searching through these publications is not always easy.

Therefore, the possibility of asking questions directly to those who have been involved in psychological therapy for years is of great value, because it saves a lot of time and also allows us to have a global vision of the subject, in which irrelevant information has already been filtered and discarded, showing above all what is most useful.

2. Solve the stagnation

One of the most common reasons why psychotherapists resort to case supervision has to do with the need to advance therapeutic processes in which significant improvements are not being seen. In this way the aim is to channel the intervention by focusing on the achievement of concrete and objectifiable goals..

3. Enhancing therapeutic skills

Supervision for psychologists also helps to polish therapeutic skills that are not always explained in books: so-called "soft skills" have been shown to play an important role in helping patients and connecting with them better.They can be trained more easily if there is a real person monitoring the way in which the professional who seeks to be supervised behaves.

4. Share resources and strategies

It should not be forgotten that the supervision of clinical cases is carried out through direct communication between professionals who exchange information; this means that the most up-to-date knowledge and resources can be disseminated in a more agile way, without the (relative) rigidity of searching for and reading articles in specialized journals, taking postgraduate courses, etc.

One of the advantages of this is that, by perceiving specific problems or needs that the person seeking supervision does not quite know how to approach, the supervisor can propose, on his or her own initiative, solutions that the other person had not considered before, because the relationship is symmetrical. This is something that occurs less frequently in interactions of a rather asymmetrical type, such as master classes in a university degree or in a Master's program.

In short, clinical case supervision sessions are a means by which knowledge travels spontaneously, responding to specific needs at the moment they are recognized as such.

5. It helps to see the therapeutic relationship in perspective

Finally, another advantage of this kind of service is that it helps to detect problems related to the therapeutic relationship with specific patients. That is, phenomena that are born and die in the course of psychotherapy and about which there is and can be nothing published, but which also provide a great deal of information.but which nevertheless provide a lot of relevant information that we must know how to take advantage of in order to reach the therapeutic objectives and establish a climate of honesty, trust and attunement.

Are you looking for this type of service for professionals?

If you are professionally engaged in psychotherapy and you are interested in supervision services for psychologists, we invite you to contact us, the center El Prado Psicólogos. Our team of professionals has more than 15 years of experience attending to patients, and has experts in different therapeutic orientations and diverse areas of intervention: child and adolescent therapy, adult therapy, sexual therapy, perinatal psychology, couple therapy, etc.

In addition, we supervise both online and in person in Madrid, in sessions of 25 or 55 minutes.

To see our contact information, please access this page.