Overview
Are you an experienced healthcare practitioner working in a clinical or education setting actively engaging with lifelong learners of health and social care practice in supervisory, mentorship or coaching partnerships; guiding other health and/or social care professionals in such a capacity, or you may be a supervisee/mentee wishing to progress your career towards taking on a supervisory and/or mentorship role.
This unit aims to support and facilitate building and/or further developing your competence and capability as a workplace supervisor or guiding others to develop as such, within the context of relevant practice or educational settings.
The unit offers a flexible approach for embedding your learning and professional development within your practice, with particular focus on formative, normative and restorative functions of being a supervisor and developing as an effective and supportive mentor. You will have the opportunity to share your experiences with student peers working in practice and academic institution settings, exploring best practice and areas for improvement together in a safe, facilitated setting. The expectation is that you will be supported to develop the specific skills, knowledge and attributes required for your supervisor role within whatever context you work.
In this unit you will adopt self-directed, autonomous learning approaches. You will be supported to identify your own learning and professional develpoment needs related to specific supervisory and/or mentorship role requirements, which provide the foundations for this unit.
You will be guided and supported to critically evaluate and reflect on your supervisor and mentor role and its impact on supporting professional colleagues and/or students. This will involve considering your own values and beliefs systems and ethical and legal dilemmas that may occur within supervisory practice.
Course Details
How this course is taught
Self-directed, autonomous learning, self-appraisal and reflection on your own learning and professional development needs and specific supervisory and mentorship role requirements provides the foundations for this unit. You will be guided and supported to critically evaluate and reflect on your supervisor and mentor role and its impact on supporting professional colleagues and/or students. This will involve considering your own values and beliefs systems and ethical and legal dilemmas that may occur within supervisory practice.
You will have the opportunity to review and appraise key literature surrounding supervision, coaching and mentoring and synthesise this within your own supervisory practice, whether this is within the context of academic supervision or health and/or social care practice. The focus will be on the underlying evidence-base on which your supervision skills and attributes are to be developed, starting with your own learning needs analysis and applying the principles of this approach to your own learners. Discussion, debate and participatory activities provide the basis for face-to-face and/or on-line interactive, student group action learning sessions within which you will have opportunities to share supervisory and mentorship experiences, to explore best practice and areas for improvement in a safe, facilitated setting, within the different contexts that the student group are functioning. An integral element of the course is that you will focus on your self-awareness through experiential learning processes and will also gain feedback on practice, learning and sharing experiences with other practitioners as motivated as yourself. You will be guided and supported to critically evaluate and reflect on your developing supervisor / mentor role, building evidence of applying your learning and skill development into your own practice. The expectation is that you will be supported to develop the specific skills, knowledge and attributes required for your role and by so doing will also be able to guide and support other aspiring supervisors and mentors.
Why you should study this unit at Health Sciences University?
Our workforce development provision is designed to be aligned with professional practice, and adopt an approach of integrated learning, teaching, and assessment that is not only developing independent learning, but encouraging students to integrate theory and practice. The approach to learning and teaching within the course emphasizes: the diversity of learners, autonomy of learning, life-long learning, and a dynamic learning experience.
What you will learn on the course
- Learning needs analysis – practice or academic setting; Theories and models of workplace supervision and mentorship, long arm supervision, learner centred approaches, equality, diversity, inclusivity.
- Theory to practice application for individual and group/peer supervision.
- Formative, normative, restorative functions of supervision.
- Boundaries and responsibilities in supervisor/supervisee partnerships, ethical and legal issues within the context of supervisory practice.
- Enablers and challenges to effective supervision.
- Explore the notion of ‘failure to fail’ (Duffy, 2003).
- The reflective supervisor and supervisee and supportive reflective learning, assessment – recording and reflection.
- Maintaining and safeguarding standards of practice – academic and/or practice-based settings, improvements in health and social care delivery through supervision and mentorship; Supporting practice-based learning and professional development through supervision; Coaching skills and processes, buddying.
How the course is assessed
Summative assessment provides the opportunity for you to demonstrate that you have met the learning outcomes for the module.
Formative assessment and feedback provide opportunities for you to understand how to learn more effectively and how your performance can be improved or maintained.
You are encouraged to undertake a period of self and peer reflection in the classroom related to their supervisory skills, identifying areas they plan to build on during the course of the unit. The unit tutor will review and provide feedback on draft copies of the student’s summative assessment work, following group and/or individual tutorials.
Entry Requirements
Applicants for our Professional Development Units should usually be employed as registered healthcare professionals working in relevant clinical areas.
Ideally you will have a first degree in a health sciences related subject as a minimum or equivalent. If you do not meet this criteria please do contact us and we can discuss your application on a one to one basis. For units that have a work-based element, please ensure that you have your line manager’s support before applying.
Still have questions about applying?
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Why choose Health Sciences University
There are many benefits to studying at Health Sciences University, from our expertise and history in teaching health sciences, to our state-of-the-art facilities, on-site clinical training, and of course our location on the beautiful Bournemouth coast.
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