Supportive Supervision

Supervision is a systematic process for increasing efficiency of the health personnel by developing their knowledge, perfecting their skills, improving their attitudes towards their work and increasing their motivation. It is thus an extension of training.

STDCs need to carry out supervisory visit so as to visit all districts at least in an year. Selection of districts for supervision could be made based on the routine monitoring done by STDCs. Districts which require support need to be given preferences and shall be visited more frequently. 

A minimum of two members consisting of at least one medical doctor should visit the district for supportive supervision. A minimum of two supervisory visits to districts should be conducted by STDC per month. Supportive supervisory visits could be clubbed with EQA visits by IRL. STDC director should prepare the advance monthly supervisory visit plan for STDC and communicate to STO before 25th day of the prior month.  

Key thrust areas for a particular supervisory visit should be decided prior to the visit based on inputs from monitoring and programatic reviews. The team should spend a minimum of two days in the district. The team should visit district and sub-district institutions, interact with staff and beneficiaries and assess the correctness of program data captured. Supervisory checklists recommended by NTEP SM&E guidelines could be followed with contextual adaptations.  

Supervisory visits by STDCs should not be a fault finding exercise but need to be a collaborative effort to identify problems and find solutions. It should be an effort to provide ongoing support for solving problems and to overcome difficulties, provide constructive feedback on performance and continuous encouragement.  It should also aim to build capacity of the health staff to implement the program procedures correctly, to assess HR and training needs and to ensure data quality assurance.  

Report of supervisory visits including activities undertaken, key observations and specific recommendations with timelines to be prepared and feedback to be provided to concerned district within 7 days of completion of the activity. STDCs should also advocate with STC to solve any issues requiring actions from the state level. STDCs should ensure that the each recommendation is an activity/task for the district/state to perform. STDCs should also monitor the actions taken against each feedback and close the feedback once the task is satisfactorily accomplished.