Mental health articles

Personal development and learning

The continuous fl ow of evidence concerning the effi cacy of pharmacological interventions, new drugs and interventions regarding management, require mental health practitioners to be proactive in maintaining their knowledge and skills. Practitioners also need to be able to refl ect on their practice and values in dynamic and changing mental health services.

The role of supervision in the development and maintaining of new skills and practice has been emphasised. A defi nition provided by ‘Vision for the future’ sits well in the medicines management framework: ‘.a formal process of professional support and learning which enables individual practitioners to develop knowledge and competence, assume responsibility for their own practice and enhance consumer protection and safety of care in complex clinical situations. It is central to the process of learning and to the expansion of the scope of practice and should be seen a means of encouraging self-assessment and analytical and refl ective skills.’ DH  Supervision for medicines management should function on a number of levels, developing practitioners’ knowledge base by utilising a problem-solving approach focused on their caseload and refl ective practice to address changing levels of competency in intervention areas, ethical and relationship issues. This process can be seen as a conscious and purposeful strategy to explore experience and learn from it. The arrangements for developing supervision systems need to be context driven, making maximum use of available resources.

Tags: development, learning, personal