Invitations to think and feel in forensic nursing; the role of clinical supervision and reflective practice

Providing nursing care to people who have experienced child sexual abuse, assault and rape is a highly specialised and psychologically demanding task.  Necessarily much focus is on the technical aspects of the task of providing care to patients.  The specialist administrative and nursing team in the Sexual Assault and Treatment Units (SATUs) in Ireland provide complex treatment to a particularly vulnerable group of people from various backgrounds in Irish Society. The service is open to all genders and gender identities, aged 14 and over. The care is free and it is a recognised safe place to go to if you have been raped or sexually assaulted. In the Department of Health’s Policy Review of the SATUs in Ireland they recognised the challenging nature of the work and recommended the provision of high quality emotional supports for all staff (core and on-call). This paper considers the provision of reflective practice to members of the SATU team, with a particular emphasis on their emotional and psychological experience at work. The introduction of reflective practice into a nursing setting will be discussed including opportunities and challenges that emerged, and how the service gained momentum over a year. The paper will reflect on one case example in the form of a supervisee/supervisor relationship in an effort to deepen and broaden our understanding of the need for professional spaces in which to consider ones experience at work.