By Jody Shepherd
Public Health Nurse, Middlesex-London Health Unit
The act and process of reflective supervision has the potential to create safe spaces for public health nurses to examine and understand the powerful emotions evoked within their home visiting work with families. Jody Shepherd, is a Public Health Nurse at the Middlesex London Health Unit and who has been home visiting for 13 years in both the Healthy Babies Healthy Children and Nurse-Family Partnership programs. Recently Jody created a powerful video about her positive experience with reflective supervision and shared with us, “I had a powerful experience this week with reflective supervision and I wanted to share it with you. This experience helped me understand how reflective supervision can enhance my professional development, critical thinking and improve my well-being when done right. After a really tough home visit I went from wanting to quit my job and feeling like a failure to feeling empowered and validated that I did everything I could and I believe this was all because of effective reflective supervision.”
Jody is currently working with the PHN-PREP team as part of a placement for her Master of Science in Nursing program at York University. Jody’s work with PHN-PREP is focused on reflective supervision and supporting public health nurses and supervisors with the tools and evidence they need to strengthen reflective supervision practice in public health home visiting programs.