Digital Commons @ LIU

Genetic Counseling Students’ Perceptions: Does Supervisory Training Affect Students’ Perceived Competence of their Supervisors?

Clinical supervision of genetic counseling students is one of the integral methods for teaching, training and ensuring competent entry-level genetic counselors. Because of the large impact a clinical supervisor plays in his/her student’s training, the genetic counselor needs to be effective in his/her role. However, a qualified genetic counselor is not guaranteed to be a competent clinical supervisor due to the different skill set required for both counseling and supervision. Therefore, supervisor training may be a good method for aiding genetic counselors in adapting to the skills needed for successful supervision. There is a strong positive correlation between supervision training and a supervisor’s perceived competence in their supervision skills. However, knowing what effects students’ perceptions of their genetic counseling supervisors is essential to understand the student-supervisor relationship and thus, the potential for successful learning, as students’ perceptions affects their motivation and behavior. This study, which is the first to focus on student perspectives of clinical supervision, explores the relationship between prior student knowledge of supervisory training and perceived competence in supervisory skills. Data was collected by survey and is undergoing analysis using an independent t-test of the modified Perceived Perioperative Competence Scale. This exploration of the significance of supervisory training is another step in the process of creating, and perhaps even mandating, supervisory training in the field of genetic counseling. This in turn can increase the chance of an increasingly effective supervisor-student relationship and the creation of competent novice genetic counselors.