By Jody Shepherd
Public Health Nurse, Middlesex-London Health Unit
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused enormous amounts of stress for public health nurses. Nurses have faced different challenges with ongoing changes in their working environment while also dealing with the personal stress that occurs while living through a pandemic. Let’s be honest… it has been very challenging to remain optimistic, motivated and present day-to-day. Despite this public health nurses have continued to support families with kindness, compassion, professionalism and dedication. Nurses have witnessed the ongoing challenges our communities have faced due to the pandemic and listened to endless stories about different hardships families have endured. And this load is hard to carry.
The PHN-PREP team would like to share with you the experiences from a public health nurse integrating reflective practice into clinical supervision. This topic is especially important now because nurses have endured such challenging and stressful working environments due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Reflective supervision can support nurse’s professional development and well-being by thinking through thoughts and feelings associated with difficult situations, examining their actions and enhancing their critical thinking skills to develop solutions to complex issues.1,2
This is only the start of the conversation around reflective supervision. Over the next few months the PHN-PREP team will be posting resources to help public health nurses and supervisors enhance their reflective supervision skills. Jody Shepherd is a public health nurse with the Middlesex London Health Unit and she has posted this video blog to share her experiences with reflective supervision. We would love to hear from other nurses and supervisors about their experiences with reflective supervision. What did you find helpful? What was challenging? And what do you need to support your reflective supervision experience?
1Beam, R., O’Brien, R., & Neal, M. (2010). Reflective practice enhances public health nurse implementation of nurse-family partnership. Public Health Nursing, 27(2), 131-139. https://www.doi:10.1111/j.1525-1446.2010.00836.x.
2Department of Education. (2020). PSDP-Resources and Tools: Using the supervision relationship to promote reflection. https://practice-supervisors.rip.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/KB-Using-the-supervision-relationship-to-promote-reflection.pdf