Introduction

Supportive supervision is a process of guiding, helping, training and encouraging staff to improve their performance to provide high quality health services. Supportive supervision is not unidirectional or intended to punish, rather it should use open, two-way communication and team-building approaches to facilitate problem-solving. Supportive supervision focuses on monitoring performance towards goals, using data for decision-making and depends on regular follow-up with staff to ensure that new tasks are being implemented correctly within specific timeframe. Supervision includes oversight and implementation of clinical and nonclinical tasks and activities that affect the essential PHC services, management, and technical delivery of health services. These include:

• control of work processes and systems,

• maintenance of facilities and infrastructure, and

• monitoring and improvement of systemwide performance and effectiveness.

The following supportive supervision standards is designed to support the DPNO’s and MA’s in their supervisory roles and the public health nurses for the self-assessment. In utilizes a 3-star ranking system to monitor healthcare facility progress towards these standards, with the overall aim of improvement in the quality of PHC service delivery.