NCL Supervision Toolkit

The Education Faculty is comprised of Faculty Programme Directors across each NCL borough:  

• Dr Rakhee Shah, Barnet Faculty Programme Director 

• Barnet Training Hub: barnet.cepnadmin@nhs.net 

• Chaima Hale, Camden Faculty Programme Director 

• Camden Training Hub: info@communitymatters.co.uk 

• Dr Gemma Bailey, Enfield Faculty Programme Director 

• Enfield Training Hub: nclicb.enfieldtraininghub@nhs.net 

• Dr Carmel Sher, Haringey Faculty Programme Director 

• Haringey Training Hub:  nclicb.haringey.training@nhs.net 

• Dr Rini Paul, Islington Faculty Programme Director 

• Islington Training Hub: igpf.islingtontraininghub@nhs.net 

Contact your local borough Training Hub at the email addresses above to sign up for regular communications about forthcoming workshops local education and training updates.

More information on the NCL Education Faculty can be found on the NCL Training Hub website: https://www.ncltraininghub.org/training-and-support/faculty-and-quality/education-faculty. 

Barnet PCN 3 identified the challenge of managing the supervision of 20 pharmacists and pharmacy technicians across seven different practices in the borough, and set out design a framework to embed effective regular supervision for these roles, identifying the importance of regular supervision in particular for newer/more junior pharmacy professionals, in order to strengthen competence and clinical confidence.  

In response, the PCN introduced a number of changes, led by the PCN Clinical Director and Manager, and supported by senior members of the pharmacy team. These changes included the introduction of a dedicated weekly supervision time for the whole pharmacy team, consisting of 30 minutes with a GP supervisor and 30 minutes (or more as needed) with a senior pharmacist (as protected time allocated on EMIS). Additional time on Wednesday afternoons was also allocated for CPD to support learners on training pathways.   

The PCN team took steps to ensure each pharmacist was allocated to a named GP supervisor (in the practice they worked in) and a senior pharmacist supervisor, and developed a standard document template for pharmacy supervisors to log discussions and actions which is sent to the learner to provide feedback and add any learning needs. The document is saved centrally on the PCN Pharmacy Teams channel, available to the GP Supervisor as a record of what has been discussed. 

The outcome has been robust and transparent weekly supervision of the whole PCN Pharmacy team. Learners are better supported in providing feedback and documenting areas for which they require further support, and the framework provides an early warning system to identify concerns that can easily be shared across organisations. Feedback from the whole team has been positive; learners feel more supported, feel the benefits of protected supervision time with different supervisor expertise, and are more confident in their clinical practice and that the PCN will respond to concerns that they raise.  

The PCN is now seen as a safe and positive learning environment that considers all team members’ views, which other local pharmacists now wish to join and engage with.  

Islington South PCN team collaborated with practice supervisors and clinicians to respond to issues raised around the PCN-level employment and sharing of ARRS clinicians. Initially the PCN team set out to address concerns around PCN-level employment models, with shared staff members working at multiple practices resulting in difficulties in getting oversight of an individual’s supervision and ensuring appropriate supervision standards were being met. 

The team began by mapping supervisors to supervisees across practices, but soon realised that the most effective way to understand how clinicians were receiving daily supervision in practice would be to ask clinicians to clearly document this, prompting the development of the Supervision Plan Document, designed to completed by each of the PCN-employed ARRS Clinicians, with the support of their professional supervisor. 

The document is divided into sections that ask the clinician to comment on specific needs and agreements for day-to-day clinical supervision (e.g. discussions, support and advice about patient care), educational supervision (if undertaking a training pathway, e.g. course, CPD and contact time requirements), areas of focus for professional supervision (e.g. CPD and self-directed learning) and plans for annual reviews (e.g. to check against appraisals, induction, etc.). Each section is designed to be reviewed by the supervisor and discussed with the clinician to work through issues that have been raised.   

In addition to requesting details on day-to-day supervision, the team added relevant links to supervision guidance and formatted different sections to clearly highlight different supervision type definitions and how they should be approached. In doing so, the document met several needs; it improves understanding of the NHSE guidance for appropriate supervision according to job role and experience by outlining different role accreditation pathways and training needs, and it provides oversight of an individuals' supervision arrangements when working at multiple practices in a standard format that demonstrates how supervision standards are being met. 

The value of having this document has also become apparent when managing requests for details of individual practices’ supervision structures from PCN leads and during CQC visits; the document is saved centrally and can easily be updated at various times, e.g. after an appraisal, following changes in job title/qualification level, and following changes in working environment/pattern which means that the previous supervision plan no longer works.  

The Supervision Plan Document has been positively received and shared across other PCNs in the borough as an example of how to ‘passport’ ARRS clinicians to support them to practice safely across multiple organisations.