Supervision in Behavioral Health: Implications for Students, Interns, and New Professionals

Behavioral health providers (BHPs) are trained by their respective programs and professions on the importance of communicating with other professionals around patient care, yet few are trained on how to provide collaborative care and work as part of a team. New clinical innovation models, such as integrated care, punctuate the need to further develop training methods to best equip the next generation of BHPs to work in collaborative settings. Supervision is a tool that students, interns, and new professionals can use to help them navigate new and unfamiliar territory in health care settings. This manuscript will describe the steps of choosing a supervisor, provide elements that must be considered when developing a supervision contract, offer a template for crafting a document that will assist with assessing fidelity to one’s practice and maximize consistency and productivity in the supervision process, and detail the potential supervision dynamics in different levels of clinical collaboration. Supervision that is tailored to the BHPs level of clinical collaboration in their given practice setting can provide a structure for the supervision process.