Distance Learning: Can Telesupervision Facilitate GP Educator Supervision?

Distance learning involving both time-synchronous (telephone)

and asynchronous media (email, podcasts) has been used

successfully in education and supervision of allied medical

specialties over the years. However the poor social presence

afforded by such electronic interfaces has, until recently,

limited the application of distance learning to post- graduate

medical education. High-quality real-time audio-visual

communication software is now widely available and being

used increasingly for social communication by more and more

people. Could this technology be used to facilitate the

educational development of remote learners? This paper

offers the experience of senior GP Educators using remote,

time-synchronous, audio- visual technology (namely Skype) to provide distance supervision to a peer.