ABSTRACT
This chapter explores about the needs of any primary care professions for supervision and support, the volume and complexity of the workload, and the ethos, that seems to be very daunting problems. It believes that in primary care the most useful definition of supervision is 'facilitated learning in relation to live practical issues'. Where supervision and support do occur in primary care, they may be haphazard and crisis-driven. The chapter finds that practitioners describe two factors as maintaining this state of affairs: workload and ethos. If supervision is to be promoted within primary care, it needs to be done with a clear understanding of the scale of the need and the many forces that may lead to wariness, fear or resistance to the idea. Primary care clinicians have to deal, often without guidance, with an enormous, sustained and difficult workload.
