In professional activities, progress is also an important component to success and psychological balance. Therefore, for many specialties a program has been developed to improve working skills. For most professions, upgrades, courses or internships are provided. All of them contribute to some progress in the work of a person, pushing him to development.
Features of training specialists
Psychology and therapy went further in this direction and provided for their wards a branch of productive professional growth - this is supervision in psychology. Such a component can help both in working practice and in personal emotional experiences. This role is played by the supervisor - a specially trained professional in the field of psychotherapy. His main task is to provide assistance and support to his less experienced colleague.
In Russia and the CIS countries, psychological supervision as a separate profession is rarely considered, since there are no individually assigned courses or faculties in this area. But this is not an obstacle to the study of such a specialty on their own or in the program of general psychology. Many highly qualified supervisors study outside of Russia or practice abroad. Therefore, in our country it is possible to find a professional specialist in this category and get his help and support in your own work process.
So, supervision in psychology is a universal system of professional assistance of specialists, helping growth in the future career. It can also be called co-therapy, which is based on the work of several highly qualified specialists with extensive experience. This helps with the help of a supervisor to objectively look at their problems at work. It also helps to share responsibility for eliminating them with a qualified cat therapist.
Benefits of specialist assistance in difficult situations
At the moment, there are several precise aspects of supervisor support:
- create ways to find your own potential in psychology;
- better understand the intricacies and features of working with clients, better understand their problems and emotional state;
- to understand the effectiveness of their own treatment methods, analyze their effect and the correctness of comparison with the basics of psychology and therapy;
- be aware of your own emotional state in case of customer problems and reaction to them.
The object of supervision is a qualified specialist in the field of psychology or therapy, undergoing practice or internship in their field. A practicing professional can seek help from such a system to improve their qualifications or solve their own problems in their personal lives that affect their activities.
In addition, a specialist in the field of supervision should:
- keep constant contact with your ward and monitor his emotional background;
- to promote the development of the therapist, to promote the opening of opportunities in professional activity;
- maintain their own position and unemotional assessment in relation to the specialist;
- provide support to restore the integrity of the therapist and his personality.
The process of supervision is able to eliminate emotional retardation or regression, to save novice psychotherapists from professional loneliness. This technique is also able to increase the efficiency of the workflow and eliminate subsequent errors in it.
The main categories of supervision
In the practice of this method of assisting specialists, there are three forms:
- full-time;
- part-time;
- correspondence.
They are distributed by the number of participants, their role in the whole process and the time period that is necessary to eliminate problems.
Full-time supervision category
The first form is considered the most extensive and deepest. Sessions based on its principles can be held in a group, family or individual format. In catotherapy of this nature, the supervisor conducts an in-person session and oversees the specialists and their clients. This form should be agreed with patients and their psychologist to prevent privacy issues.
Full-time supervision can be divided into subspecies:
- personal (with the presence of the client during the cototherapy session);
- group (with the interaction of a patient or family and psychotherapists), most often used in problem patients;
- spatial;
- temporary.
Personal cotherapy is carried out in the interaction of a specialist and his supervisor. Also, the patient or family is involved in the process. The main objectives of such therapy are the joint identification of problems with the client and the search for solutions to them.
Group supervision is considered the most productive of all its forms. The principle of its action is to practice with one patient or family, where the therapist distributes individual tasks between each specialist. For example, a couple came to see a therapist, one participant needs to determine the relationship between the spouses, the second - to determine the communication style, the third - the main problems that exist between them. Thus, it is possible to achieve a complete determination of the causes of the disorder in the family, their recognition by all specialists, and find methods for their treatment. Also, group supervision participants gain new experience and skills.
Spatial cotherapy is used when teaching a therapist how to communicate with patients. During the session, the supervisor can be in the room (encouraging a specialist and pushing him in the right direction), or outside of it (without interfering with the main process).
The temporary form of cotherapy is dependent on the urgency of conducting a psychoanalysis with a specialist (delayed or immediate).
Advantages and disadvantages of full-time therapy
Advantages of such supervision:
- More effective sessions.
- Fewer tricks.
- Minimum material costs due to the short duration of supervision.
- The set of training techniques for psychotherapy in relation to a specialist.
- More trusting relationships between contactees.
No matter how attractive and useful this method of psychotherapy is, it has many disadvantages:
- When an inexperienced specialist works with a patient, the confidentiality of the treatment process is violated, which in the future can negatively affect the mental state of the client.
- Developing a therapist's decision-making dependence on his more experienced colleague.
- Excessive attention to the workflow of the supervisor, which interferes with the natural course of events.
In full-time, as in all others, there are advantages and disadvantages. But today, this method of cotherapy is considered the most extensive and correct, when a specialist has many problems, both professional and personal.
Extramural Supervision
The principles of its work consist in the remote resolution of problems, without close contact with another professional. The correspondence form of supervision can take place both in an individual session and in a group. The specialist collects materials from his psychotherapeutic work and provides them to the supervisor to analyze his activities and identify shortcomings in the work.
The cat therapist himself does not take part in the work activities of his ward and does not conduct research on his patients. This makes this form the best for long-term cooperation with a specialist. Also, an analysis of a psychotherapist's report can be understood in the presence of his other colleagues, which helps to gain more experience at work, but not harm the patient’s emotional state by examining his situation remotely.
Combination of these forms
An extramural and extramural species is not yet widespread in the world, but nevertheless it is considered effective. This supervision in psychology is most often used for couples, in which it is quite difficult for an inexperienced specialist to sort out the problems.
For such a cototherapy session, you need an equipped room with mirror glass, a group of professionals in this field, a novice therapist and a married couple agreeing to such a session. During the supervision, experiencing difficulties in work, a specialist can contact his more experienced colleagues by phone for a consultation. Such catotherapy not only helps the therapist to independently carry out their professional duties, but also when they fail, feel better and receive support from therapists. She develops self-confidence in a novice specialist and develops experience.
In order for the psychotherapist to correctly determine the form of social supervision, which in the future will contribute to the most effective solution of problems, it is necessary to pay special attention to the specifics that impede professional activity, and the most suitable methods for its elimination.
An accurate assessment of the severity of a case can only be given by an experienced specialist psychotherapist. It is impossible to independently recognize all your mistakes in professional activity. For severe cases, only individual lessons are suitable that contribute to the quick resolution of problems. But minor mistakes can be made only by correspondence consultation, thanks to which the therapist will be able to send a specialist in the right direction.
Types of psychological supervision
At the initial stage of the introduction of such a method of therapy, a method is determined that will be more productive for a specialist. Full-time and part-time forms are divided into several main and most global categories. In general, there are two varieties of cotherapy:
Such supervision differs in application techniques in relation to the specialist and problems that a more qualified colleague should solve.
Individual form
This supervision in psychology is to enhance the skills of a specialist with less work experience. The main tasks of the form of this nature are: the development and support of professional knowledge, methods for their application in practice, analysis and solution of personal problems that may affect the treatment of the patient.
Also, an individual approach to such psychotherapy gives a specialist increased confidence in his abilities, the ability to conduct client treatment sessions on his own in further practice and the opportunity to increase his competence in the profession. The supervisor and his ward constantly interact with each other during individual work and share responsibility for treating the patient among themselves.
Psychotherapy sessions of this nature should be carried out every 1-2 months. During the set time, the supervisor must compile reports on the work done with his client and monitor the dynamics. Sessions do not end until the employee acquires all the necessary skills for working with clients and learns to control his emotions in the profession.
If new problems arise in professional activities, the therapist can again resort to the help of a supervisor. As many psychologists note, such sessions will always benefit the specialist, they should be carried out regularly. The help of a supervisor may be needed even in cases where at first glance the therapist does not have any problems, and patient treatment is always successful. An experienced professional will be able to analyze the methods that the specialist uses in his work, and his general emotional state, to generalize the observations obtained.
Thanks to individual supervision:
- the employee is given due attention;
- all problems of a personal nature that the therapist does not want or is embarrassed to indicate in a group of people will be dealt with in confidence;
- the specialist who is at the adaptation stage will better understand all the instructions and advice of a more experienced professional.
Group form
Promotes the acquisition of teamwork skills. Supervision sessions in psychotherapy conducted in a team are able to give a person more knowledge about all the client's problems. Everything that one specialist could not understand or misunderstood can be recognized by another. During such meetings, the supervisor only distributes tasks to the wards, monitors their implementation and subsequently draws conclusions about the work done by the team.
Any form of assistance to specialists is able to eliminate problems and shortcomings in professional activities. Which method of supervision the psychotherapist will prescribe will depend on the characteristics of the work process, the personality of the person and his emotional background, which manifests itself in the profession.