The Nursing Workforce and Workplace
The Impact of Clinical Supervision on Emotion Work in Palliative Care
Helle Merete Nordentoft
Assistant professor
Danish University of Education
Århus University, DK
Abstract
Previous research into clinical supervision (CS) has almost exclusively focused on supervisees’
post-hoc accounts of what happens in CS and not linked the impact of CS with what takes place in
this practice. This paper anticipates to fill this gap by exploring how emotion work is done in CS
and how the supervisees proceed and do emotion work at weekly interdisciplinary conferences after
CS in a palliative ward. CS is seen as a particular discursive practice - “a language game” - for
emotion work and the paper illuminates the ways in which conferences after supervision become
inspired by the “language game” in CS initiating emotional meta-perspectives on the care and
treatment of patients. These meta-perspectives and ethical considerations arising from the meeting
meta-perspectives illuminate a dual aspect of care in the sense that it serves the needs not only of
patients but also team members. It is argued that this recognition captures one of the great
challenges in palliative care namely to separate the carer’s own needs from patients. The article,
therefore, concludes that CS may enhance professional development and prevent stress and burnout
in palliative care.
Keywords: Clinical supervision, Emotion work, Language game, Interdisciplinary Palliative
Conferences.