ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at clinical supervision in an educational setting, by looking at vocational training for general practice. It shows some of the ways that clinical supervision can be established and 'normalised' within primary care. Broadly speaking, the GP vocational training year is the only time in any primary care career when regular, systematic and fairly prolonged case-based discussion is the rule rather than the exception. During the year spent with a GP trainer, most GP registrars get an opportunity at least once a week for some protected time with their trainer, mainly in order to discuss cases that concern them. In reality, many relationships between GP trainers and their registrars are fairly unproblematic. As practising doctors, both trainers and registrars work within several frameworks of legal liability. These include health authority (or PCT) terms of service, the professional code of conduct supervised by the General Medical Council (GMC), and the civil and criminal law.
