Clinical supervision, emotional exhaustion, and turnover intention: A study of substance abuse treatment counselors in the Clinical Trials Network of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

An intriguing hypothesis is that clinical supervision may protect against counselor turnover. This idea has been mentioned in recent discussions of the substance abuse treatment workforce. To test this hypothesis, the authors extended their previous research on emotional exhaustion and turnover intention among counselors by estimating the associations between clinical supervision and these variables in a large sample (N = 823) of community treatment providers in the National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network. An exploratory analysis reveals that clinical supervision was negatively associated with emotional exhaustion and turnover intention. Given previous findings that emotional exhaustion and turnover intention were associated with job autonomy, procedural justice, and distributive justice, the authors estimate a structural equation model to examine whether these variables mediated clinical supervision’s associations with emotional exhaustion and turnover intention. These data support the fully mediated model. The authors found that the perceived quality of clinical supervision is strongly associated with counselors’ perceptions of job autonomy, procedural justice, and distributive justice, which are, in turn, associated with emotional exhaustion and turnover intention. These data offer support for the protective role of clinical supervision in substance abuse treatment counselors’ turnover and occupational well-being.