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Clinical supervision activity among mental health nurses : a critical organizational ethnography

This qualitative study IS underpinned by interpretive-constructionist methodological governing principles, and took shape around a developing research focus and aim rather than in relation to pre-existing research questions. The focus of the research is on clinical supervision activity. This refers to formal and informal research encounters with participants and significant others in the organization in which the study was carried out, about: the experience of the practice of clinical supervision; attempts to translate textual prescription and description of clinical supervision into organizational reality; finally, the meaning endowment placed on both of the above by myself, my participants, and significant others associated with my research. In order to address an important gap in the literature, the aim of the research developed as the need to unpack and clarify the meaning, and the affective and organizational theoretical implications of clinical supervision activity. Part one of the ethnographic report is constructed around three overlapping categories: owning, resisting and feeling. These categories are developed around the proposition that the bureaucratic rationality inscribed within both the literature on clinical supervision, and in organizational attempts to implement it, fails to take account of both the emotional underlife of the organization and otherorganizational factors. Specifically, I argue that clinical supervision activity, and my inscription within it as 'insider' researcher', was influenced, shaped and constrained by the pre-existing interpersonal rules and norms of the organization in which my research was conducted. Those governed what could and could not be done or said in or about clinical supervision activity, arguably undermining organizational goals to implement it. Part two of the ethnography explores the maIn theoretical and conceptual implications an sIng from the preceding ethnographic construction, around structural organizational power and politics. This addresses a significant gap in the contemporary literature in clinical supervision in nursing and mental health nursing. I conclude with a critical auto-critique of the study itself, around a discussion of its strengths and limitations and possible future research directions

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:299192
Date January 1999
CreatorsDuncan-Grant, Alec
PublisherUniversity of Brighton
Source SetsEthos UK
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation

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