Signing and Supervision Approval
A clinical note involves two distinct steps in Praxi for supervised practitioners: the supervisor's approval is the second-pair-of-eyes review required by AHPRA supervision arrangements, and the author's signature then locks the note as their own clinical record. Approval always comes first -- an unsupervised practitioner simply signs.
When to sign
If you are the note's author, sign it once you are satisfied the record is accurate, complete, and ready to be locked. Signing makes the note immutable — further changes go in via amendments, not edits. See Signing Notes for deadlines and the mechanics of the action.
You don't need supervisor approval for your own note unless you are a provisionally registered practitioner or flagged as requiring supervision (interns typically are).
When a note needs supervisor approval
Practitioners with provisional registration or who are flagged as requiring supervision on their profile cannot sign a note until their supervisor has approved it. The flow is:
- Finish the note and select Submit for Review
- Your supervisor reviews it from their pending-approvals queue
- The supervisor either approves the note or requests changes with comments
- If changes were requested, revise the note and resubmit
- Once approved, sign the note as usual -- attempting to sign before approval is blocked
The supervisor's approval does not add a second signature to the note; it is recorded as the supervision decision on the note and in the audit trail, and it unlocks signing for the author.
The supervision approval queue
Supervisors see every note submitted to them for review in a single pending-approvals queue, reachable from the supervision area of the sidebar. The queue lists notes where you are recorded as the author's supervisor and a review is awaiting your decision.
From the queue you can open the note, then approve it or request changes with comments. Because review happens before signing, requesting changes simply returns the note to the author as an editable draft -- no amendment is involved.
Who can approve whose notes
Approval follows the supervisor relationship recorded against each practitioner — not any senior clinician can review any junior clinician's note. The relationship is set in the supervisee's profile. Supervisors, practice owners, and clinical governance roles hold the organisation-wide note access that supports oversight.
If your sidebar doesn't show the supervision queue, your role isn't set up as a supervisor — talk to your practice owner.
Audit trail
The supervision decision and the author's signature both land in the immutable audit trail with the actor, timestamp, and note version. See Audit Trail for what auditors and regulators see when they review a clinical record.