INTRODUCTION
Currently in Australia, there are efforts underway to increase the use of clinical supervision (CS) in the nursing practice arena. There are signs that clinical supervision has been growing in the speciality of mental health nursing as evidenced by the establishment of standards set by the Australian and New Zealand College of Mental Heath Nurses (Winstanely and White 2002). Originally developed within the mental health care context and traditional psychotherapies (Yegdich 2001), CS is now being implemented for nurses in other clinical contexts. Whilst the practice of clinical supervision is established in other developed countries, such as the United Kingdom and the United States of America, at present it is underdeveloped in the Australian context.