Clinical supervision and resilience in nurses: A scoping review

To describe empirical relationships between clinical supervision and nurses' resilience.

Scoping review.

Electronic databases included: Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (OVID) & Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (OVID), Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) Complete (EBSCO), EMCARE (OVID), Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online (Medline, EBSCO), and Scopus, and for grey literature, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses.

We searched electronic bibliographic databases from database inception to May 2024 for published original articles and theses of any study design reporting clinical supervision and resilience in nurses, from studenthood and throughout the profession. Articles and theses were exported, deduped, dual screened, data were extracted and analysed, and studies were appraised.

Seven publications were included, five reported qualitative findings, two reported quantitative and mixed methods results. Studies differed widely in the ways in which the relationship between clinical supervision and resilience were either explored and/or the ways this relationship became apparent. Five reported delivery of an intervention but differed in whether resilience or clinical supervision was a target of the intervention, one reported delivery of a workplace resilience intervention. Remaining studies were observational. One of the seven included studies met all criteria for methodological quality. Available evidence was consistent with the notion that clinical supervision may support and enhance resilience in nurses, however the evidence was not strong.

The absence of rigorous controlled studies that include standardised assessment of outcomes, and that are reported to a high standard, represents a gap in the literature. This gap provides an opportunity to further investigate the possibility of a causal link between clinical supervision and resilience, and the factors that affect it.

Open Science Framework (OSF): https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/KVGPD.