Introducing client feedback into marriage and family therapy supervision: a qualitative study examining the transition to empirically informed supervision

Abstract

AbstractThe use of client feedback in clinical supervision provides a way for supervisors to access clients' experiences of the treatment process and monitor clinical progress of their trainees' cases. The present qualitative study investigated a marriage and family therapy training programme's early experience of introducing the Systemic Therapy Inventory of Change (STIC®; Pinsof et al., 2009) into clinical supervision. Supervisors (N = 8) and trainees (N = 14) were interviewed to elicit their experience using the STIC in supervision with a focus on understanding the frequency of use as well as the facilitators and constraints to implementation. The analysis of the narratives resulted in the development of five themes (time, supervisors' expectations, broader training system influences, client feedback training, and perceived helpfulness) that contributed to decreased usage over time. Recommendations to the field for integrating client feedback into empirically informed training and supervision are provided.Practitioner points Training programmes should consider the potential benefits of utilizing client feedback measures for outcome‐based training and supervision Training programmes adopting a client feedback measure need to be aware of the potential challenges of implementation The additional time needed to use a client feedback measure in the clinical supervision process must be considered as it is the most notable constraint to implementation