What you can expect in Clinical Supervision?

About Dr. Arias Shah

Dr. Arias Shah is an AAMFT Approved Supervisor. As a gatekeeper of the supervisees, an essential goal is to collaborate and facilitate their development into competent, confident, lawful and ethical therapists by assisting them to gain a sense of confidence, understand the value of not working in a vacuum (need to keep collegial relationship), embrace a theoretical framework, develop an awareness of self and systems and the interactive effects on another (their ideas of client’s story, their own experiences related to client’s story and how they manage the therapy process (Lee & Nelson (2014)), to be mindful of their therapeutic language (circular versus linear), understand the implications of the laws and ethics involved in their cases including their administrative work competency, and master their therapeutic approach. To achieve this, Dr. Arias Shah is mindful of how to challenge the supervisees and be supportive (Goldenthal, 1994). Moreover, Dr. Arias Shah values and looks forward to building a working alliance with her supervisees, respecting them as unique individuals being mindful of culture, diversity and language in contextualizing their work and professional development, to collaborate with them in developing their professional and clinical goals accordingly, as it is vital to the supervisory relationship.

Expectations of supervision with Dr. Arias Shah

The expectation of the trainees is for them to be dedicated to the supervision process. They are expected to comply with ethical, professional and legal procedures. To meet these expectations, the trainees’ goals would be to develop the self of the therapist (awareness) and effective clinical skills to meet the AAMFT core competencies. Moreover, to meet the overall goals, first their has to be an assessment on what the supervisee initially knows about self, models, therapy, ethics, etc. Then the smaller goals would be established, which may include staffing cases, challenging paradigms, identifying cycles, understanding languages, meaning and context, having an awareness of biases and potential harm. Dr. Arias Shah and her supervisees would identify how her goals as a supervisor, and theirs, as well as those of AAMFT are in line and are met by the end of their supervision journey to be granted their license and/or keep it.

Dr. Arias Shah believes supervision is important and absolutely necessary throughout a clinician’s profession. The need and value for supervision is to one assure that the supervisees gain the necessary insights, understanding, tools, skills, and mindset that is needed to become an ethical, competent lawful clinician to be able to help their clients and more importantly do no harm. Secondly, through the process of supervision the supervisees can potentially avoid burning out by learning how to take care of themselves, develop collegial relationships that may be beneficial to them as professionals and clinicians, and continue gaining opportunities to continue growing and refining their skills when discuss cases, in turn helping their clients.

Given the wealth of diversities among individuals and systems, Dr. Arias Shah believes that supervision should be integrative. She would be mindful of what methods and approaches to integrate that would be in line with the purpose and goals of supervision. She would encourage the supervisee/s to challenge themselves to learn different approaches in preparation for licensure, but more importantly to broaden their perceptions and skills when assessing their work and helping their clients. The continual development of the therapist is a journey between the trainee and supervisor holding both accountable in evaluating the self, the system/s, and the therapy. To measure their development Dr. Arias Shah would use a post assessment/evaluation based on an initial pre-assessment/evaluation.

To facilitate this growth Dr. Arias Shah would require both individual and group supervision sessions as part the supervisees' clinical supervised hours. She believes and has experienced herself the benefits of having both individual and group supervision, which offsets the disadvantages of having only one, providing the trainees’ with amply opportunities to learn about him or her self personally and professionally. Some Advantages of group supervision have been: an opportunity to consult with several therapists, obtain different perspectives how to approach cases/therapy, gain a sense of support (future network), and so forth. Of course in a dyadic session the advantages are that the supervisees would get the individual attention needed to be able to open up more, sharing more details about a case, granting opportunities to process their thinking more comfortably, and sharpen their skills. Dr. Arias Shah would encourage them to inquire with their clients to see if they are open to being audio recorded for the purpose of solely therapeutic development, which would only be reviewed by the supervisee and her, and upon the case being closed the audio will be disposed. The advantage of this format is that it will be similar to a live supervision, but more advantageous because of the ability to rewind. However, retrospective case presentation, the most common format in staffing cases depends solely on the memory of the clinician, which may be considered a disadvantage.

Regardless of which format of supervision Dr. Arias Shah will require supervisees to have filled out before supervision session a form for either individual or group supervision in where they will conceptualize a case they would like to address in session. These forms though slightly different would include: case summary, success and challenges with the case, therapist’s needs and concerns, reflection of the therapist’ self in the room, and identify which model he or she is using.

In summary, as a systemic thinker and in guiding future MFTs Dr. As Shah will be mindful of the supervisee as an individual and a whole, that is that the supervisee is a part of several systems that affect his or her thinking and actions (family, work demands, culture, religion, gender, health, stressors, etc..). She will encourage the trainees to be mindful of how they are being systemic when working with their client/s through language and questions to promote positive change and identify the difference that makes a difference within a frame of safety guided by their gained competency of what is an effective and ethical AAMFT therapist.