ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the responsibilities of clinical supervisors and demonstrates how record keeping helps supervisors fulfill their responsibilities. It aims to clarify the characteristics and contents of good supervisory records and discusses the distinction between supervision and consultation. The chapter reviews special issues arising in mandated supervision. Mental health professionals use the apprenticeship model to teach psychotherapy. At all levels trainees and new therapists learn under the tutelage of supervisors, who are more experienced practitioners and who are responsible for overseeing and directing supervisees’ assessment and treatment of patients. Supervisory records benefit supervisors and supervisees in many of the same ways that psychotherapy records benefit practitioners and patients. There are parallels between ways supervision records may be used as supervisory tools to facilitate supervision and ways psychotherapy records may be used as treatment tools to facilitate treatment. Supervisees may enter supervision feeling anxious and overwhelmed by new practice settings and difficult patients.
