Abstract
Clinical supervision is pivotal in supporting nurses to render quality, safe patient care. It is
therefore important to understand clinical supervision from operational nursing managers’
context in order to define existing challenges and propose suitable recommendations.
The purpose of this study was to explore and describe operational nursing managers’
experiences of clinical supervision within the context of an academic hospital in Gauteng
province and propose evidence-based practice recommendations to improve patient safety and
the quality of clinical supervision. An exploratory, sequential, mixed-method design was used
and implemented over three phases to take advantage of the strengths of both the qualitative
and quantitative research designs. The core qualitative methods were exploratory, descriptive
and contextual designs, using a phenomenological approach, followed by a quantitative method
with a comparative descriptive and cross-sectional design. Purposive and stratified random
sampling methods were used in Phases 1 and 2, respectively, to recruit 9 participants and 47
respondents to the study. Unstructured, individual interviews were conducted to collect data in
Phase 1, and an adapted Manchester Clinical Supervision Scale (MCSS) questionnaire was
used to collect data in Phase 2.
Trustworthiness measures of credibility, dependability, confirmability, transferability and
authenticity were pursued in the study. Validity and reliability principles were also adhered to
throughout the research. Moreover, the study’s findings will contribute to the knowledge base
of clinical supervision, and the understanding of clinical supervision assisted the researcher in
proposing evidence-based practice recommendations to improve clinical supervision within an
academic hospital.