Evidence-based supervision: Tracking outcome and teaching principles of change in clinical supervision to bring...

Supervision is the primary way in which psychotherapy trainees develop the skills of applying interventions, conceptualizing cases, and practicing self-reflection. Although critical to professional development, the nature and objectives of supervision can vary widely among supervisors, depending on idiosyncratic differences and the orientation used. As clinical psychology moves toward integrating science and practice, the need to teach students evidence-based principles of therapeutic change and how to use outcome measures to enhance progress is paramount. Furthermore, with hundreds of "evidence-based" interventions and widely diverse supervisors, the fact that cross-cutting interventions and common factors carry the burden of most therapeutic change is frequently lost. In this article, we outline an experimental training system that is being tested as a means to teach student-therapists to use empirically established moderators (treatment factors) and mediators of change to tailor their interventions to client differences. This experimental approach is derived from Systematic Treatment Selection (Beutler, Clarkin, & Bongar, 2000), a cross-cutting system that can be used to aid individualized treatment planning as well as to track and use client outcomes in clinical supervision within a graduate-level training clinic.