Supporting Clinical Supervision for Mental Health Nurses

CMHL is working closely with the Chief Mental Health Nurse (CMHN) and the Centre of Mental Health Nursing (CentreMHN) to support the implementation of Victoria’s clinical supervision (CS) framework for mental health nurses. The CMHL has been participating in the CMHN’s CS Framework Implementation Working Group and the CS Evaluation Working Group since 2019.

Mental Health Nursing Clinical Supervisor Database

We proudly launched the new Mental Health Nursing Clinical Supervisor Database on Tuesday 17th November, 2021.

This database is designed to assist mental health nurses to find a suitable clinical supervisor. 

• If you are a supervisor you can apply to be listed on the database by completing the supervisor form and asserting that they meet the minimum criteria for inclusion in the database.
• If you are looking for a supervisor you can search for a supervisors using filters for specialties, availability etc. and/or key words.

Watch a video of the launch below, which describes the functionality of the database and includes a question & answer session.

This video is a recording of the launch of CMHL’s much anticipated Mental Health Nursing Clinical Supervisor Database, held on Tuesday 17th November, 2021.

The database can be found under the Learning & Resources tab on the CMHL website, cmhl.org.au, or at clinicalsupervision.cmhl.org.au

We hope you find this database useful.
Please email us with any queries at supervision@cmhl.org.au

Enrolled Nurses

With the recent appointment of the Enrolled Nurse (EN) educators to CMHL, we have added EN representation to the CMHN CS committees to ensure the consideration of EN needs as both supervisors and supervisees. CMHL EN educator consultations have found that services have varying approaches to EN supervision. This will require consideration as the framework continues to be implemented. The CMHL will continue to advocate for the consideration of ENs in the delivery and receipt of supervision.

Implementation of the Framework

This financial year has seen the second half of the pilot program run out at Peninsula Health. For this pilot the CMHN and CMHL supported Peninsula Health to utilise an online mentoring platform from an external provider. This allowed the CMHL to consider Peninsula’s experience in our own plans for the development of an online clinical supervision database to be developed with our own web developers. We have progressed the development of this database and anticipate we will launch it late 2021.

We have also been participating in the 2021 workshops held with the five services in this year’s stage of the framework implementation.

CMHL ongoing engagement and participation with key teams such as the CMHN is vital to ensure the many workforce development projects progressed in Victoria align and that duplication of effort and output is minimised. CMHL holds a unique position statewide which allows it to broker solutions that would not be possible on a service-by-service basis. For example, whilst the framework states that organisations must manage clinical supervisor databases, it is only CMHL’s unique statewide role, and its online presence, that can support the development and maintenance of a statewide database. Additionally, the CMHN’s work is specific to nurses, whereas the CMHL considered the workforce development of the whole public clinical mental health workforce. As such, CMHL can consider the expansion of training and database use to the broader workforce.

We look forward to continuing to partner with the CMHN and the CentreMHN to review the Clinical Supervision for Nurses draft standards and progress the implementation of the framework.