ABSTRACT
The overall aim of reflective practice may be to open up thinking about clinical practice, but it is only likely to be helpful to offer ideas as to how to go. In an area which can be unhelpfully enigmatic and open-ended, presentation of a model to potential facilitators of reflective practice groups gives something to work from, which they are, of course, free to accept or adapt or reject. A model of supervision may, therefore, be more important as a means to an end than as an end to itself – the end, in the case, being a collaborative and purposeful supervisory relationship. The quality of the supervisory relationship comes through as particularly important in the growing research literature. The emphasis on the quality of the supervisory relationship in determining the success or otherwise of supervision brings the author back with renewed interest to an early influence: R. Gosling and P. M. Turquet’s classic essay The Training of General Practitioners.
