The Sentio Supervision Model (SSM)
The Sentio Supervision Model (SSM) proposes a structure to implement DP into psychotherapy supervision (Levenson, 2024; Vaz & Rousmaniere, 2024). This supervision model was originally developed by Alexandre Vaz and Tony Rousmaniere at the Sentio Counseling Center and Sentio Marriage and Family Therapy Program (2024), having since been refined in collaboration with the Center’s resident supervisors (Stuart, 2024).
The SSM is a 7-step approach that provides an ambitious plan for a 50-minute supervision meeting. Its main aim is the seamless integration of three supervision-enhancing contributions: the use of outcome monitoring (Lambert, 2010), the review of therapy recordings (Haggerty & Hilsenroth, 2011), and the engagement in deliberate practice skills training. The model offers a very specific structure for what is expected of the supervisee, and is strategic about where and how to best ask the therapist to stretch their comfort level with difficult clinical material. Furthermore, it aims to promote a collaborative dialogue that helps target the supervisee’s unique “zone of proximal development”, as related to their ongoing clinical challenges (Vaz & Rousmaniere, 2021, 2022, 2024). The supervision model was thus designed to be in alignment with K. Anders Erricsson’s proposal that DP training should constitute “the establishment of individualized behavioral learning goals, the engagement in repeated behavioral rehearsal of skills, and provision of expert feedback that encourages and refines further rehearsal” (Ericsson, 2018, 2003).
Below is a summary of the seven steps in the Sentio Supervision Model: