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 educator.