The aim of this research was to explore the role of a professional development supervisor in helping health professionals to reflect on their role in patient consultations. This article is written from the viewpoint of patient-centred care and seeks to examine how the mentor/supervisor can facilitate reflection and learning by discussing, with professionals, videotapes of their regular meetings with patients. The specific context of the article is an educational intervention in Sweden, based on modern theories of competence development for professionals in diabetes care. A purposeful sample of 18 patients with type 2 diabetes agreed to have their regular meeting with a general practitioner (GP) or diabetes nurse videotaped. The GPs or diabetes nurses of these patients then participated in an intervention, comprising sessions when they reviewed with a supervisor their consultations with the patients. These supervising sessions were videotaped and are investigated in this article. The supervisor's role was to make observations that could alter the professional's understanding of the diabetes consultation through video-cued narrative reflection. Five overarching themes were identified from the content (the what-aspect) of the intervention: medical problems; patient characteristics and reactions; patient education; the consultation as such; and the healthcare organization. The activities used in carrying out the intervention (the how-aspect) were: confirmation and feedback; interpretation; reflective questioning; suggestions and corrections; and closed-end questions or brief answers. It was hypothesized that this way of conducting reflective educational interventions would be beneficial for healthcare professionals when working with patients with various longstanding medical conditions, recognizing that a patient-centred approach which included the patient's learning and possibilities for self-management are more suitable for the chronic illness encounter.