A comparative study of clinical supervision in the Republic of Ireland and the United States

We replicated Son, Ellis, and Yoo (2013) and extended Ellis et al.'s (2014) taxonomy of harmful and inadequate supervision by providing and testing cross-national comparative descriptive data about clinical supervision practices in the Republic of Ireland versus the United States. Participants were 149 Republic of Ireland and 151 U.S. mental health supervisees currently receiving clinical supervision. The results suggested that characteristics of supervision in the Republic of Ireland and United States evidenced both similarities and differences. The dissimilar credentialing systems appeared to account for the observed differences, suggesting that Ellis et al.'s (2014) criteria for inadequate supervision need to be modified to account for country-specific standards for supervision. Unexpectedly, no significant differences were observed between the Republic of Ireland and United States in the high occurrence of inadequate, harmful, or exceptional supervision. The results suggested that 79.2% (Republic of Ireland) and 69.5% (United States) of the supervisees were categorized as currently receiving inadequate supervision, and 40.3% (Republic of Ireland) and 25.2% (United States) of the supervisees as receiving harmful supervision. At some point in their careers, 92.4% (Republic of Ireland) and 86.4% (United States) of the supervisees received inadequate supervision--51.7% (Republic of Ireland) and 39.7% (United States) received harmful supervision. On the positive side, 51.0% (Republic of Ireland) and 55.0% (United States) of the supervisees reported receiving exceptional supervision from their current supervisors. Substantial discrepancies were observed between supervisees' perceptions versus more objective criteria of the inadequate or harmful supervision they received. Implications for cross-national supervision research and training are discussed.