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NCT Number: NCT07262372

Supervision in Substance Use Disorder Treatment Programs

Substance use disorders such as opioid addiction affect millions of adults in the United States each year, but the delivery of high-quality, effective addiction services is disrupted by organizational issues such as counselor burnout and turnover. Clinical supervisors are essential for supporting counselors in specialty addiction treatment programs, but few supervisors receive supervision-focused training. This project seeks to develop and pilot an evidence-based supervision strategy that has a high potential to enhance supervision and result in improved counselors' well-being and performance and, in turn, to improve client outcomes.

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Key information

Conditions

Self Efficacy Behavior Behavioral Symptoms Burnout, Professional Burnout, Psychological Chemically-Induced Disorders Mental Disorders Occupational Diseases Occupational Stress Stress, Psychological Substance Use Disorders Substance-Related Disorders Supervision

Age range

18 year and older

Sex eligibility

All sexes

Study type

Interventional

Phase

Not applicable

Primary location

University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences

Little Rock, Arkansas, 72205, United States

Location status: Recruiting

Location contact

Jure Baloh, PhD

CONTACT

[email protected]

501-526-6604

About this study

Substance use disorders (SUDs) such as addiction to opioids, methamphetamines and alcohol are a significant burden in the US, affecting almost 50 million individuals annually. Community specialty SUD treatment programs ("SUD programs") are a key type of SUD providers and while effective treatments for SUD exist, significant issues in the organization and delivery of SUD programs (e.g., burnout, turnover) undermine the delivery of high-quality services. Clinical supervisors are centrally positioned to support SUD counselors (frontline clinical providers) and ensure high service quality. For clinical supervisors to effectively support counselors, they need evidence-based supervision strategies. Currently, supervisors in community SUD programs receive very little training, support, and direction for supervision, and thus their supervision practices are highly variable, raising concern about the effectiveness of clinical supervision as currently provided in these programs. Evidence-based supervision strategies can help fill the gap, and evidence from child welfare settings shows they improve leadership, climate, and client outcomes. Based on our preliminary formative work with SUD providers in Arkansas, a reinforcement-based supervision strategy developed for counselors was deemed acceptable and feasible in SUD programs, and had high perceived potential to improve supervision quality, counselor well-being and performance, and client outcomes. Participants thought the structure and content of the strategy were a good fit for SUD settings. However, for a supervision strategy to be supportive of the work they do, it needs to be developed to reflect the language, case examples, and organizational factors relevant to the SUD settings. The goals of our study are to iteratively develop and refine a supervision strategy for SUD settings, and to pilot it in residential treatment programs using quality improvement and implementation science tools and approaches. Aim 1 involves leveraging previous experience developing supervision strategies and partnering with SUD providers to develop and refine the supervision strategy for SUD. Using the Evidence-Based Quality Improvement (EBQI) process, we will engage SUD partners in a series of collaborative meetings to review and discuss the supervision strategy and related study materials, and to make key decisions. The output of this work will be a refined and optimized SUD supervision strategy. Aim 2 involves conducting two pilot cycles with supervisors and counselors in a sample of SUD residential treatment programs to assess the feasibility and acceptability of the supervision strategy, examine its impact on key organizational, counselor, and client outcomes, and to document barriers and facilitators for its implementation and sustained use in routine practice. This study will provide key information to inform planning and design of a future fully powered study to assess the effectiveness of the new supervision strategy in a large sample of SUD programs.

Who can participate

Healthy volunteers accepted: Yes

Only the study team can determine whether someone qualifies for participation.

Inclusion criteria

  • Serves as a supervisor (i.e., oversee work of counselors) or counselor (i.e., directly work with clients) at a substance use treatment facility/program
  • Program/facility provides residential services

Exclusion criteria

  • Supervisors contracted (not employed) by the facility

Treatment and study plan

FOCUS supervision strategy

Other

The FOCUS supervision strategy provides a strenghts-based model for supervision. It is built around three core components: (1) Five pillars for effective supervision interactions, (2) practical skills that operationalize these principles, and (3) a set of experiential activities that provide foundational learnings for staff to practice the skills around real-life situations (from which future client-specific interventions can be built). In this study, FOCUS is being tailored for SUD treatment settings.

Primary outcomes

  1. Counselor self-efficacy

    Time frame: Every 6 months for 2 years

    Self-reported survey response at the counselor level (Efficacy subscale on TCU ORC; 1-5 Likert scale, higher scores are better; Lehman WEK, Greener JM, Simpson DD. Assessing organizational readiness for change. J Subst Abuse Treat. 2002;22(4):197-209. doi: 10.1016/S0740-5472(02)00233-7.)

Secondary outcomes

  1. Supervisor fidelity to FOCUS

    Time frame: Monthly, 2 years

    Expert rated fidelity to FOCUS at the supervisor level (measure to be developed as part of the study)

  2. FOCUS acceptability

    Time frame: Every 6 months, for 2 years

    Supervisor perceptions of acceptability (satisfaction, appeal) of FOCUS and related materials (Acceptability of Intervention Measure [AIM], 1-5 Likert scale, higher scores are better; Weiner BJ, Lewis CC, Stanick C, et al. Psychometric assessment of three newly developed implementation outcome measures. Implementation Science. 2017;12:1-12. doi: 10.1186/s13012-017-0635-3.)

  3. FOCUS feasibility

    Time frame: Every 6 months, for 2 years

    Supervisor perceptions of feasibility (ease of use, "do-ability") of FOCUS and related materials (Feasibility of Intervention Measure [FIM], 1-5 Likert scale, higher scores are better; Weiner BJ, Lewis CC, Stanick C, et al. Psychometric assessment of three newly developed implementation outcome measures. Implementation Science. 2017;12:1-12. doi: 10.1186/s13012-017-0635-3.)

  4. Leadership - implementation leadership

    Time frame: Every 6 months, for 2 years

    Counselor perceptions of supervisors' support for ESTs (Implementation Leadership Scale [ILS], 1-5 Likert scale, higher scores are better; Aarons GA, Ehrhart MG, Torres EM, Finn NK, Roesch SC. Validation of the implementation leadership scale (ILS) in substance use disorder treatment organizations. J Subst Abuse Treat. 2016;68:31-35. doi: 10.1016/j.jsat.2016.05.004.)

  5. Leadership - clinical supervision

    Time frame: Every 6 months, for 2 years

    Counselor perceptions of supervisor instrumental assistance (Clinical Supervision, 1-5 Likert scale, higher scores are better; Knudsen HK, Ducharme LJ, Roman PM. 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. J Subst Abuse Treat. 2008;35(4):387-395. doi: 10.1016/j.jsat.2008.02.003.)

  6. Organizational Social Context - implementation climate

    Time frame: Every 6 months, for 2 years

    Supervisor and counselor shared perceptions of organizational expectations of, and support and reward for EST use (Implementation Climate Scale [ICS], 1-5 Likert scale, higher scores are better; Ehrhart MG, Torres EM, Hwang J, Sklar M, Aarons GA. Validation of the implementation climate scale (ICS) in substance use disorder treatment organizations. Substance abuse treatment, prevention, and policy. 2019;14(1):1-10. doi: 10.1186/s13011-019-0222-5.)

  7. Organizational Social Context - organizational climate

    Time frame: Every 6 months, for 2 years

    Supervisor and counselor shared perceptions of organizational environment (Mission, Cohesion, and Stress subscales from TCU ORC; and Effort subscale from the Patterson Organizational Climate Measure; 1-5 Likert scale, higher scores are better; responses will be aggregated across subscales for primary analyses; Lehman WEK, Greener JM, Simpson DD. Assessing organizational readiness for change. J Subst Abuse Treat. 2002;22(4):197-209. and Patterson MG, West MA, Shackleton VJ, et al. Validating the organizational climate measure: Links to managerial practices, productivity and innovation. J Organ Behav. 2005;26(4):379-408. doi: 10.1002/job.312.)

  8. Counselor functioning - burnout

    Time frame: Every 6 months, for 2 years

    Counselor perceptions of being overextended and depleted of emotional and physical resources (Emotional Exhaustion on Maslach Burnout Inventory; 1-5 Likert scale, lower scores are better; Maslach C, Jackson SE. The measurement of experienced burnout. J Organ Behav. 1981;2(2):99-113. doi: 10.1002/job.4030020205.)

  9. Counselor performance

    Time frame: Every 6 months, for 2 years

    Supervisor ratings of counselor performance (based on annual performance evaluations in use at the facilities)

  10. Organizational performance/outcomes - turnover

    Time frame: Every 6 months, for 2 years

    Objective measures of employee turnover rate (at program level)

  11. Organizational performance/outcomes - client treatment completion

    Time frame: Every 6 months, for 2 years

    Objective measures of client treatment completion rate (at program level)

  12. Organizational performance/outcomes - client satisfaction

    Time frame: Every 6 months, for 2 years

    Client-reported satisfaction levels (at program level; as routinely collected by programs)

Study contacts

Contact information is provided by the study sponsor or research team.

Jure Baloh, PhD

CONTACT

[email protected]

501 526 6604

Sponsors and collaborators

Lead sponsor

University of Arkansas

Other

Collaborators

  • Chestnut Health Systems
  • National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)

Registry information

Official study title

Supervision Strategy for Substance Use Disorder Treatment Programs: A Pilot Study

Important dates

Study start
2025
Primary completion
2027
Study completion
2027
First posted
Dec 3, 2025
Registry last updated
Dec 11, 2025

OpenTrials presents study information sourced from ClinicalTrials.gov. The official registry record should be consulted for the latest information.

View the official ClinicalTrials.gov record (opens in a new tab)

This listing is for discovery and informational purposes only. It is not medical advice, does not guarantee that a study is recruiting, and does not determine eligibility. Contact the study team and a qualified healthcare professional when considering participation.

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