Sammanfattning
Background: The education of intensive care nurses in Norway is undergoing continuous change – it is in the process of becoming more academic whilst the requirement for a high proportion of clinical placements is maintained. This change entails challenges for the organisation of practice supervision.
Objective: The objective of the project was to enhance the quality of practice supervision by means of organisational adjustments.
Method: This action research project was a collaboration between an intensive care unit at Oslo University Hospital and Lovisenberg Diaconal University College (LDUC). Six intensive care nurses acting as supervisors for intensive care students in practice participated in the project and supervised a cohort of master’s degree students at LDUC throughout three clinical placements. During the same period, they carried out a training and monitoring programme consisting of a clinical supervision course worth 10 credits, and took part in supervision groups and reflection groups as well as planning and evaluation meetings. We studied the supervisors’ experiences by means of focus group interviews before, during and after the project period.
Results: The supervisors found that the project had positive impacts on the quality of student supervision. The sense of community with other supervisors, competence development and the opportunity to discuss and get advice on issues they encountered in practice were of value in developing the supervisory role. The supervisors were given the opportunity to participate in the development of practice through continuous evaluation of practice and the testing of new measures. We implemented some organisational adjustments to adapt the functioning of the unit to the supervision through close cooperation between management and supervisors.
Conclusion: There will always be a gap between what is desirable and what is possible to achieve at a workplace with high activity, constant changes and limited financial and staffing resources. This project had the goal of implementing measures that were feasible within the ordinary operational framework. We discovered that small adjustments could result in substantial benefits.