Informal Post-Doc Supervision

[PositivelySkewed]

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Just wanted to bounce this supervision issue off of anyone who has experience with an informal post-doc or wants to chime in.

I started an informal post-doc with a local school system back in August. My supervisor is a very well-respected psychologist who also works for the school system and has trained some of the most successful psychologists in the large metropolitan area in which I live. She is in her 70s, but is still sharp and works 50+ hours every week.
When I accepted the post-doc/employment opportunity, we agreed to meet 2-hours for individual supervision weekly. I am the only post-doc she is supervising.

I guess my conscience is eating at me a little bit because I doubt I am actually receiving that much face-time. She reviews and co-signs my reports and we consult in bits and pieces each day throughout the week, but I would be stretching to say this is close to 2-hours. During most of these situations, she consults with me with me about how I would handle some difficult cases that aren't on my caseload more so than me consulting her about my own cases. It seems we have more of a colleagueal relationship than a hierarchical one.

A little more information: I am fully licensed to practice in the schools, but am provisionally licensed as a clinical psychologist while I receive supervision. I am only seeing clients within my job at the school system. With the provisional license, we signed an affidavit with the state licensing board saying that I am receiving 2-hours of supervision per week.

I do feel like I am receiving supervision from other sources, though, but not about cases in-particular. I completed an APA-accredited internship and regularly talk with my internship supervisor, as we are working on several research projects together. His opinion is that I just don't need that much supervision and am ready to begin "spreading my wings" more at this point. I am also teaching graduate clinical courses at a local university (where I also feel like I get informal supervision and support from faculty) and he thinks that my teaching and research experience in assessment may intimidate my supervisor (he said that he was a bit intimidated himself during internship).

Is this just the nature of the beast with informal post-docs? I don't feel particularly uneasy about issues with my caseload other than the actual counting of supervision hours. I think in large part this comes from contrasting my current experience with internship and practica supervision that was more hands-on, contained didactics, and involved staffing cases more than collaboration. I also don't necessarily agree with my former internship supervisor-- I still have a ton to learn in a lot of areas and am very intimidated by being more independent. In talking with my friends completing formal post-docs, I feel like their training is so much more structured that I am getting left behind.

 

[thewesternsky]

Hi! I am also on post-doc. My post-doc is a formal one, but I am also not getting quite as much one-on-one supervision as my licensing board requires (90 minutes per week for me). If we count group supervision and team meetings, then I'm way more than fine.

First, I think what you are feeling is perfectly normal. It sounds like you're doing really well and that your supervisor doesn't have concerns about your performance... AND, moving toward practicing more autonomously has been difficult for me too.

Have you considered speaking with your supervisor about these issues? You might need to take the lead on some of this, but I can think of a few ways to incorporate formal supervision sessions and didactics even into an informal post-doc setting. Off the top of my head:

-Ask for 1 hour per week to be set aside for formal, one-on-one face time (in addition to the informal chats you've been having)
-Arrive to supervision with an agenda, including current cases you want guidance on
-Idenitify learning goals for yourself; find readings in the areas where you think you still have lots to learn and chat with your supervisor about them

If you have already talked to your supervisor about these things, how did it go? It would be nice if things like this were already in place... But since they are not, consider it an opportunity to be assertive and to improve your self-management skills in advance of autonomous practice. 🙂

 

[PositivelySkewed]

Hi! I am also on post-doc. My post-doc is a formal one, but I am also not getting quite as much one-on-one supervision as my licensing board requires (90 minutes per week for me). If we count group supervision and team meetings, then I'm way more than fine.

First, I think what you are feeling is perfectly normal. It sounds like you're doing really well and that your supervisor doesn't have concerns about your performance... AND, moving toward practicing more autonomously has been difficult for me too.

Have you considered speaking with your supervisor about these issues? You might need to take the lead on some of this, but I can think of a few ways to incorporate formal supervision sessions and didactics even into an informal post-doc setting. Off the top of my head:

-Ask for 1 hour per week to be set aside for formal, one-on-one face time (in addition to the informal chats you've been having)
-Arrive to supervision with an agenda, including current cases you want guidance on
-Idenitify learning goals for yourself; find readings in the areas where you think you still have lots to learn and chat with your supervisor about them

If you have already talked to your supervisor about these things, how did it go? It would be nice if things like this were already in place... But since they are not, consider it an opportunity to be assertive and to improve your self-management skills in advance of autonomous practice. 🙂

Thank you for the response! I think I will become a little more assertive in assuring more regular supervision times. We do schedule meetings and I develop an agenda, but we usually accomplish the agenda quickly and she says remarks like "I agree 100% with your conceptualization" and "You're doing great." More constructive feedback is usually harder to come by. I can tell she reads my reports closely, though (and assessment is 95% of what my job entails). After the agenda is accomplished, we make awkward small talk or sit uncomfortably before calling it a session. Perhaps part of it too is that my position isn't terribly exciting (it mostly involves assessment of learning disorders with occasionally something different to break the monotony).

 

[Justanothergrad]

Thank you for the response! I think I will become a little more assertive in assuring more regular supervision times. We do schedule meetings and I develop an agenda, but we usually accomplish the agenda quickly and she says remarks like "I agree 100% with your conceptualization" and "You're doing great." More constructive feedback is usually harder to come by. I can tell she reads my reports closely, though (and assessment is 95% of what my job entails). After the agenda is accomplished, we make awkward small talk or sit uncomfortably before calling it a session. Perhaps part of it too is that my position isn't terribly exciting (it mostly involves assessment of learning disorders with occasionally something different to break the monotony).

I like to bring in specific and challenging theoretical cases or testing material to discuss when I find this occurring in my supervision(creating an alternative report format for forensic evaluations took up the better part of 3 weeks of supervision once because although I wasn't doing it at the time, it was an area I wanted to strengthen and develop). It gives more ground to grow on and folks have seemed less likely to give the cursory responses.