A Qualitative Exploration of Supervisory Practices and Strategies for Developing Clinical Judgment in Psychology

Clinical supervision in psychology is a process of accompanying and guiding undergraduate psychology students to achieve the competencies necessary for effective clinical intervention The consolidation of learning from existing theoretical psychology models to develop the implementation of techniques and procedures requires the accompaniment of clinical supervisors. In Mexico, clinical supervision is crucial to developing clinical intervention competencies during the internship and thus obtaining a degree in clinical psychology. The clinical supervision was given in two moments, one before the intervention focused on the elaboration of a therapeutic work plan and one post-intervention focused on a metacognitive process and clinical judgment on their performance. This research aimed to identify the practices and pedagogical strategies used by clinical supervisors to develop clinical judgment competencies in their students through four components: recognition of theories and models, development of techniques and tools, identification of the intervention's purpose, and development of ethical criteria with professionalism. The methodological design was qualitative with a semi-structured questionnaire as a data collection tool, and Atlas.ti software was used for the data analysis. The participants were 19 clinical supervisors in the process of training undergraduate students in clinical and health psychology from Tecnológico de Monterrey, México. The results found that case-oriented reading is most commonly used by supervisors as a strategy to develop recognition of psychological theories as well as the clinical simulation as a pedagogical strategy for the development of intervention techniques. Moreover, the development of ethical criteria and professionalism is of great interest to the supervisors. It can be concluded that following a structured plan for clinical supervision allows for the outstanding development of psychological intervention competencies, attending to the learning needs of each student.