NNCGSI x FoNS – Next steps & your chance to win a place on a RBCS Champion Programme

This blog was written by Grace Cook, RMN, MSc, BSc (Hons), Person-centred Practice Facilitator, Foundation of Nursing Studies

As a clinical supervision enthusiast, I was really excited to connect with the Nursing Now Challenge Global Solutions Initiative to develop a challenge about clinical supervision. We were absolutely amazed at the engagement through the three different sessions we did. If you missed it you are not too late to watch them back…

• Clinical Supervision has lots of different definitions, and no consensus about which one to follow! So, during Session 1 we consider what clinical supervision is and why we should support clinical supervision in practice.

• In Session 2, we moved on to thinking about what good clinical supervision looks like, both from an individual perspective and an organisational perspective.

• Finally, Session 3 was all about how you engage people in positive conversations around clinical supervision in order to consider implementing in your area of work.

In each session we were joined by some wonderful speakers from across the world who shared their experiences of clinical supervision.

For me personally, clinical supervision had a profound impact on my experience as a student nurse and I truly believe it enabled me to remain a student despite some challenges I was experiencing. We see and hear time and time again that students and newly registered nurses (as well as throughout our career) benefit from clinical supervision.

We at FoNS advocate for resilience-based clinical supervision (RBCS), a restorative model of clinical supervision that is characterised by:

• Co-creating a safe space
• Integrating mindfulness-based stress-reduction exercises
• Focusing on the emotional systems motivating our response to a situation
• Considering the role of our internal critic in sustaining or underpinning our response to a situation
• Maintaining a compassionate flow to self and consequently to others

You can read more about RBCS on our website, including watching a five minute video about the process. 

Evaluation of the impact of RBCS suggests that it can help individuals to develop an increased awareness of the importance of self-care and question organisational practices which impact negatively on staff (including their own) and patient wellbeing. During the COVID pandemic, we were delighted to offer programmes to both student and newly registered nurses. They spoke highly of the connections and sense of belonging that this resulted in and believed that this should be available to them during their early career years. 

We are delighted to be offering not 1 or 2, but 6 places on one of our RBCS Champion Programmes. The winners of this prize will (time zone allowing) connect as a group virtually over 13 hours (split into 5 sessions). The aim of this programme is to enable the winners to develop the necessary knowledge, skills and confidence to implement RBCS for others. This is a participatory programme so not only will the winners develop the skills to take this back to their workplace but they will network and form connections with the other winners to support each other and experience RBCS “live.”

Following this programme, winners will also be able to join our RBCS network where they will receive a monthly newsletter as well as be invited to events to support their implementation. We would also love to support the winners to write about their experiences and implementation and write blogs for our website.

In order to win this prize the challenge is to develop a plan to build regular protected time for restorative reflective practice through clinical supervision in your workplace.

We would like you to submit a concept note, 800-1000 words max and we would also welcome you being creative in how you share the information! We really want to know about you, your work, and your ideas!

The full guidelines have some prompt questions for you to consider in your concept note.

This is an amazing prize not to be missed! So don’t delay and have a watch or rewatch of the videos, read the guidelines and submit your concept note to challenge@nursingnow.global by 2nd May!

About Grace

Grace’s career started with an undergraduate degree in Criminology and Psychology at Sheffield Hallam University. This provided her the opportunity to work as a Special Constable, giving her the experience of working with people with mental health difficulties, which led to her desire to work within this arena.

She commenced a post graduate diploma in Mental Health Nursing at the University of Nottingham and loved her role as a student nurse however had some difficult times during her studies. The combination of clinical supervision, Compassion Focused theory, and caring tutors supported Grace to complete her studies. Having qualified as a nurse in 2013, she worked on a specialist therapeutic unit and a variety of acute settings. She then worked as a senior community mental health nurse within the NHS.

In 2013, Grace was offered an opportunity to work as a research associate with the University of Nottingham to develop a new clinical supervision model based on Compassion Focused Therapy. This is something that she had continued to feel passionate about after qualifying and had also noticed the impact of a highly stressful role on staff’s wellbeing and therefore jumped at the opportunity. This led to her being involved in developing and evaluating Resilience Based Clinical Supervision. Grace presented findings for these evaluations at the NET conference in 2016 and the RCN Education Conference in 2019.

Grace worked with Health Education England as a RePAIR Fellow 2019/2020. When the COVID-19 pandemic began Grace ensured that she continued to advocate for staff support, including working with FoNS to develop resources as part of her RePAIR Fellow Role.

Grace joined FoNS in 2021 as the RBCS programme manager and loves working on something she feels passionate about. Grace is a qualified Professional Nurse Advocate and as well as leading the RBCS programme here at FoNS, is an advocate for restorative clinical supervision for nurses.