Episode 15: Best Practices for Clinical Supervision Preparation with Catherine Moore

Kayla: Welcome back to Your Clinical Supervisor’s Couch Podcast, and I’m your host Kayla Das.

In today’s episode, Catherine Moore, Licensed Clinical Social Worker and clinical supervisor, will share best practices for clinical supervision preparation.

Hi, Catherine. Welcome to the show. I’m so glad to have you here today.

Catherine: Hey Kayla, I’m really excited to be here too. It’s been a long time coming for this.

Kayla: Oh, a hundred percent. So, Catherine, before we dive into today’s episode, please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your practice and clinical supervision journey.

Catherine: Absolutely. Yes. So, my name is Catherine Moore. I’m an LCSW born and raised in Southern California, and that’s where I do telehealth mostly now and my journey started in what was it, 2009. So, I got my bachelor’s in social work back then. And I got my master’s, got licensed in 2019.

And for a long time, I was doing medical social work, helping people just navigating with grief and loss, life transitions, anxiety, burnout prevention with caregivers. And since then. I have transitioned into private practice. I don’t own my own private practice, but I do contract work with outside agencies, which I absolutely love. That is my jam.

And then in addition to that, I also do clinical supervision. I have a podcast and I have a directory. So, a little bit of everything I do, I just got off of a training for social workers. So I also do professional development and keynote speeches. So a little bit of everything. I like to stay busy. And specifically around clinical supervision. I started offering this in 2022 was when I started offering it and it’s been just an amazing journey. I have been doing it through a private practice and supervising their associates. I just love the work. I love helping people grow. I love diving into the different areas of social work and it helps me too to stay fresh on my skills and gives me a refresher as well.

Kayla: It sounds like you’re very busy, especially in the clinical supervision world, which is why it’s so great that you’re here talking about this today.

So first of all, when it comes to clinical supervision, why should therapists even consider preparing for a session? And why can’t they just show up and take it in stride?

Catherine: This is an excellent question. And one that I struggled with too, when I was going through my own supervision because that’s what I wanted to do, right? I was stressed out. I’m thinking, okay, I don’t know what I need to learn. Just teach me. Right. I just want to show up. I just want to be taught and that’s it. And my supervisor was not like that. She was very adamant on, okay, you bring topics to me so that we can talk about them. And I thought, oh, why can’t she just like do it?

But I did. And I’m very grateful because it gave me a increased sense of self awareness because it forced me to consider the work that I’m doing in the field, to consider what kind of feelings are coming up. Where are my skill sets lacking? What the heck am I going to talk about? Where did I struggle during that week? And also the wins. Where did I win during that week?

So it really helps to give you a sense of increased self awareness, which is really, really important. And you’re not going to get that if somebody is just telling you, Hey, today we’re talking about X, Y, and Z. So it’s super important to be prepared that way, because as clinicians, we have to have this sense of self awareness.

We have to be able to know where are we strong at? What are our skill sets? What are our strengths? And then where are the areas that we need more support in? The areas that, to be honest, that we don’t like, that we aren’t very good at and go from there.

Kayla: I think an important thing to also highlight too, as therapists, even though therapy is probably a little less structured than clinical supervision, it’s still important for the client to come into the session knowing what they want to talk about. Because as we all know, and I think we’ve all experienced it at some point as therapists, it can be really difficult when we’re trying to pull teeth. And I’m assuming with clinical supervision, it’s the same. If you don’t come with content that you want to talk about, it’s going to be a very long and daunting session.

Catherine: Yes, yes, for sure. And that’s a great point because at the start of clinical supervision, when you start the services, you have your goals, you have these yearly goals that you’re working on. And you’re right, it’s similar to therapy and the fact that you’re there to work on a specific topic on a specific area. And to be able to acknowledge, how is the work that I’m doing? How is this conversation relating to those goals? And that’s also going to make you a better therapist because it has you thinking in a different way, which normally in real life, we don’t think about how are my interactions right now relating to a goal? Like that’s not a common thought that we have.

Kayla: I can appreciate that 100%. So what are best practices for clinical supervision preparation for therapists?

Catherine: Yeah. So for me and the research that I’ve done, I kind of came up with like top three, right? Cause there’s a bunch. We could probably do a whole course on best practices. But just to keep it short. What I found is that when you’re looking for preparation as an associate right as someone going in there looking for guidance.

You really do need to focus on your recent cases and experiences, because that’s really the meat and potatoes of what we’re doing and why you’re in clinical supervision to begin with is to process, what’s going on with the clients? Where are things going good? Where are things going bad? What kind of experiences did you have processing things like trauma? I mean, I remember when I was in supervision, I would go into my supervision sessions and be like, do you know what happened? You will not believe what happened to me this week. And it’s just the processing of these experiences. And then having that person who’s. They’ve been there, done that, they know. Hardly any of these are surprises, right? And be able to sit there with you and be able to say, okay, how did that feel? Did this bring anything up for you? What was going on? How did you respond? How did the client respond? What ended up happening? What went well? What could be better in the future?

Because chances are these experiences, these WTF experiences that we get at first, they’re going to repeat. And they’re common, in all the different settings. So, just really be able to come prepared with these reflections on your cases and experiences.

Second, is definitely talking about the ethical and clinical considerations when working with clients. Because so many times there is not one right answer. There’s not one right thing to do. For example, when I was working in hospice, time and time again, there would be these ethical dilemmas that we would come into related to independence and safety. Because people who are aging or maybe they just got a new diagnosis and bam, they’re completely disabled. They’re bed bound. And they say, no, I’ve been living by myself for 30 years. I love my home. I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to go to a stinking nursing home. I want to stay here in my house. And I don’t care if I’m not safe.

And as a social worker, we’re like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Safety is number one. But I’ve seen, also sad stories where people say, okay, let’s move and safety, blah, blah, blah. And they end up getting depression and they’re isolated and they pass away. And it’s a very sad ending and there is no good solution, right? This is where the ethical dilemma comes in. Do we prioritize safety or do we prioritize their sense of independence, their autonomy and their wishes?

So that’s just one example on those ethical tensions that come up. And then also the legal considerations with that as well and the clinical and safety, all those things to process. So, it’s really important to be able to bring those up.

And number three is ultimately to work on your professional goals. Which we had kind of talked about, but if you are in an area where you’re getting supervision, there are things that you need to work on. Even me, I’ve been licensed since 2019, there’s still so many areas that I’m thinking, oh my gosh, I definitely need training in this. I don’t know. This is outside of my wheelhouse. So, there is never a time in this earth during your life that you will know everything that you need to know. So, being able to recognize where’s my skill set at right now? Where do I need to develop it? And documentation is very important and an area that we quite often don’t get as much training as we typically need in documentation.

It’s also a space to bring up emotional processing. So, what happened during these sessions that brought up a lot of emotions for you? And where is that coming from? For example, again, when I was working in hospice, I had a hard time going to nursing homes. Because of my own personal experiences, my grandmother was in a nursing home and I was a teenager, but reflecting back, I thought, oh my gosh, she was completely neglected. And so now I became hyper aware because of this trauma that I had in the past. And now I’m hyper aware and I’m telling my supervisor; I’m like they’re not taking care of my patient and they’re doing this and that and that. And really, it was just transference.

Kayla: Yeah, I love all of that and, I think that that’s a key piece of it too, is understanding not only the ethical and the practical client-based concepts that we need to talk about in clinical supervision. But also, the processing, the countertransference that’s experienced. And obviously there’s a balance between your clinical supervisor is not your therapist, but when some of that trauma comes into your clinical practice, that’s important to address in these sessions.

Catherine: Yes, absolutely. And it could be blind spots, because I had no idea. The thought didn’t even cross my mind that I was projecting my emotions from my own grandmother onto this patient. And it wasn’t even true. When I was accusing the nurse, that wasn’t even true because I had no proof. I hadn’t talked to the nurse, right? So, it’s all of these problem-solving skills that, someone outside can help you think about objectively.

Kayla: I agree. And I love that. So, are there any best practices for clinical supervision preparation on behalf of the clinical supervisor?

Catherine: Yes, absolutely. And again, these are just three that I found to be most important for me. There are whole courses on this. But for me, number one is just reviewing the notes from last week, because you want to make sure that you have the continuity in your sessions, and it helps the supervisee to know, hey, my supervisor is listening to me. They’re paying attention. They are really invested in my learning and what I say here matters. I’m being heard. I’m being seen. So that’s super-duper important is to make sure you have that continuity.

Second is to refocus on those goals, because sometimes as a supervisee, you’re in the trenches, you’re not really considering my yearly goals, right? You’re just trying to make it through the day, but as a supervisor, you’re able to reflect and say, okay, this is the goal that we’re working on. We said that we want to get better at this skill. How might you be able to use this skill with this client, right? And really challenging your supervisees in a new way.

And number three would just be to be prepared with topics and activities because while we want our supervisees to come prepared, there are weeks that they’re just not. That they’re saying it was the holidays. There was hardly any clients. There really wasn’t anything going on, which is fine, right? That happens. But I always like to have backup ideas to be able to fill that time with because there’s always something to learn. We are never done learning. And my go to’s for this is I have a list of 200 supervision topics that I snagged from, in the States, it’s ASWB. They’re the ones that have the criteria for the clinical test. And there’s over 200 criteria that social workers need to know about. So, I just created my own topics for supervision and. And go through there and I can either decide. All right, this topic that you’ll need to know for your clinical test let’s talk about it. It’s applicable here and/or giving the list to the supervisees and say from this list. What is it that you feel like you need more support in? What interests you? What do you want to talk about? What do you not know about yet?

And/or you can also use this as a tool for them to teach like the group, especially if it’s a group supervision. Say pick a topic and then teach us on it. So, for example, intervention processes, right? Principles and techniques of interviewing. That could be a simple way for people to research it. What does this mean? What are the techniques for interviewing and be able to learn themselves and also teach the group? And the other thing that I often did, especially if somebody did have a test coming up, for example, the ethics test that we have, we would go through the code of ethics kind of one by one. And talk about what does this mean? How do we see this playing out in the real world? What are your views on this?

And finally, the third tool is to have just some vignettes that are easily accessible. And the really cool thing is you can use ChatGPT to help you create these vignettes so you don’t have to really do the mental load of trying to come up with something on your own.

Kayla: That is a great suggestion and when it’s appropriate, I think leveraging technology can be really helpful. And yeah, you don’t have to come up with these ideas on your own. Just ask ChatGPT.

Catherine: Yes, yes, for sure. I love ChatGPT. It gives you so many great ideas and it’s just so fast. You can come up with 20 vignettes in like 20 seconds. It’s amazing.

Kayla: I love that. Do you have any additional advice or insights to share with listeners about best practices for clinical supervision preparation?

Catherine: Yes. I think ultimately being okay and expecting to get feedback and expecting to do some hard self-reflection because there’s learning on both sides. So as a supervisee, as a supervisor, there’s going to be times that you struggle, that you’re not perfect. And really being able to take these moments as a growth opportunity, as a learning opportunity, to be able to reflect, all right, I’m defensive, right? I think this is totally not true. I think I’m great at that. But being able to say, okay, is there any truth to this? What can I learn here? Where are maybe some of my blind spots? Because this is happening all throughout our careers as a supervisee, your main goal is to get feedback to get better. It’s not an attack on you. It’s not saying that you’re not good at your job. It’s not saying that you’re a bad social worker. It’s just saying these are the areas that you can get better at, right?

And same thing as a supervisor is that sometimes we may be overly confident and say, okay, well, I’m the expert here. I’ve been doing this for X number of years and who are you? But the new generation coming in, oh man, they’re so creative and passionate and they have access to technology that we may not even be aware of, like there’s so many apps and new research that they were learning about in their school that I had never heard of.

I remember specifically talking about anxiety reduction, which I do, right? Like that’s my jam. And one of my supervisees was like, oh yeah, it was like the Oh, and I forget the name, but whatever. It’s essentially using music at a certain hertz level, and it inspires relaxation, right? And so now I use it all the time, but at first, they had to educate me. They’re like, yeah, so there’s research done on if you just YouTube this certain frequency of music that it taps into your nervous system to help you relax. And I was like, what? This is amazing. And I had never heard of it, but they were like, yeah, we learned about it in class. And so there’s all this new research coming out that I graduated, oh my gosh, nine years ago, and they’re here learning about the current latest and greatest. And for me, it’s fun to be learning about the new things that are coming out.

Kayla: I agree with you a hundred percent because whether you’re the supervisee or whether you’re the clinical supervisor, it’s important to remember that it’s a learning opportunity for you both. Something you mentioned earlier, you said a lot of these circumstances or situations or ethical dilemmas that show up, your clinical supervisor has heard of before, but sometimes they haven’t.

And the beauty of it is that they get to explore with you and to identify some possibilities on how to move forward with you. And again, that is a learning opportunity for both the supervisee and the clinical supervisor.

Catherine: Yes, and a great way to model that it’s okay to not have all the answers. I mean, you’re right. There are times that come up that I said, oh, wow, this is new. Let’s figure it out together. So super important. That’s a good add.

Kayla: So, Catherine, you host a free podcast yourself. Can you tell us a little bit about your podcast, what it’s about, and how it can help listeners?

Catherine: Yeah, absolutely. So, my podcast is called social workers rise. And I started this podcast back in January of 2020. And to be honest, it came from a place of burnout because I was thinking, oh my gosh, I’m licensed now. I’m getting burnt out again. I thought once I was licensed, like my whole world was going to be great. And it wasn’t like that.

And I saw so many things that were just messed up about our field. I wasn’t so optimistic anymore. I wasn’t disillusioned. I was in the thick of it and I’m thinking, man, this is really some messed up stuff. And I thought about leaving social work, but then I thought, no, no, I can’t. I don’t want to do anything else.

So, I started this platform as a way to give voices to the social workers, to these issues and to help support other people who might be struggling like I was. to let them know that you’re not stuck. There’s so many opportunities in this field and to just see beyond government and nonprofit and private practice. There’s so many opportunities.

And over the past four years, I’ve had the chance to interview so many amazing social workers, and I’ve inspired hope. I’ve inspired people to quit their toxic jobs, to heal from burnout, to apply for jobs that they had never even heard of and get hired. Because of the tips that they found in the podcast.

And so, it’s been such an amazing journey and it’s really turned into this powerful career development type of podcast. And we’re about at 200 episodes. So, I’m really, really excited and just really proud of the work that, that I’ve done and the guests that I’ve had on the show. It’s been an amazing experience.

I highly recommend listening to it. If you are feeling stuck, if you’re needing some inspiration and motivation.

Kayla: Well, first of all, I want to congratulate you on over 200 episodes. Secondly, just for listeners to know, 200 episodes is a lot of episodes. And just to put it into perspective, the top 1 percent of podcasts are people who have 50 episodes or more.

And I’m so fortunate that on the designer practice podcast, not too long ago, we hit a hundred episodes. So, you and I are both in the top 1%. So, congratulations. And I’m so happy to hear that.

Catherine: Yeah. Congratulations to you too. That’s amazing. And it’s so interesting. I’m not going to start it on podcast talks because I love podcasts. But it is so amazing because I think people start podcasts for the wrong reasons. They say, oh, I can make money at, no, this is a passion project. You do because you love talking about the topic and then the money will come later, unless you’re a celebrity. But generally, if you want to start a podcast, I would really highly consider are you starting it for money or are you starting it because you generally are passionate about it because that passion it’s what’s going to keep you going to the 100 until you can start monetizing.

Kayla: I agree a hundred percent. So, if you are interested in tuning in to Social Workers Rise, head to socialworkersrise.com/podcast.

Or you can simply scroll down to the show notes and click on the link.

Catherine, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today to discuss the best practices for clinical supervision preparation.

Catherine: Yes. Thank you so much, Kayla. Also, I do want to mention if you are looking to get more organized with your clinical supervision and have a way to document and prepare for your supervision sessions and track your hours, there is the Social Work Clinical Supervision log that is available on Amazon, and I believe the link is in the show notes as well. So definitely pick yourself up one of these.

The best part? Is the resource section because there’s so many amazing resources in there as far as how to do an assessment, self-care. There’s safety planning. There’s talking about ACES and trauma. So, a lot of resources that are simple. Talking about cognitive behavioral therapy, right?

Simple things that new social workers and new mental health professionals in general just need to know about and they can take it with them in the field to reference them. They’ll have them during supervision meetings to help you dive deeper into those topics.

Kayla: Perfect. So, if you would like to check out and purchase Catherine’s Social Work Clinical Supervision Log, head to canadianclinicalsupervision.ca/clinical-supervision-log

And like Catherine said, it’ll be down in the show notes to click on as well.

Thank you everyone for tuning in to today’s episode and I hope you join me again soon on your Clinical Supervisors Coach Podcast.

Until next time, bye for now.