TY - JOUR
T1 - What Was It like to Learn or Teach in the Health Professions during the COVID-19 Pandemic? Sombre and Tough: A Duoethnography
AU - Ruiz Cosignani, Daniela
AU - Jowsey, Tanisha
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 by the authors.
PY - 2024/3
Y1 - 2024/3
N2 - The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic proved challenging for people working and teaching in the health professions. What was it like to learn or teach in the health professions during the pandemic? What challenges were experienced, and how were these navigated? We undertook duoethnography to provide answers to these questions. The authors are an endodontist from Chile who undertook her Master of Clinical Education in New Zealand during the COVID-19 pandemic and one of her postgraduate supervisors. A dataset of 40 photo-reflection dyads and duoethnographic text are presented. We experienced this pandemic as isolating, sombre and tough, albeit for different reasons. Managing relationships and family needs from a distance or in the same space in which work was to occur proved difficult. Postgraduate research was slowed. The educator workload was significantly increased, especially for the first six months of the pandemic, whereby she was tasked with rapidly creating a lot of online virtual learning material. We draw on Emotional Labour theory to make sense of these experiences. Support for clinical educators during pandemics should cater to situational contexts. We recommend Communities of Practice, psychological supports, acts of care (including self-care), wellbeing initiatives, and arts-based practice as potential mechanisms to support educators and learners.
AB - The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic proved challenging for people working and teaching in the health professions. What was it like to learn or teach in the health professions during the pandemic? What challenges were experienced, and how were these navigated? We undertook duoethnography to provide answers to these questions. The authors are an endodontist from Chile who undertook her Master of Clinical Education in New Zealand during the COVID-19 pandemic and one of her postgraduate supervisors. A dataset of 40 photo-reflection dyads and duoethnographic text are presented. We experienced this pandemic as isolating, sombre and tough, albeit for different reasons. Managing relationships and family needs from a distance or in the same space in which work was to occur proved difficult. Postgraduate research was slowed. The educator workload was significantly increased, especially for the first six months of the pandemic, whereby she was tasked with rapidly creating a lot of online virtual learning material. We draw on Emotional Labour theory to make sense of these experiences. Support for clinical educators during pandemics should cater to situational contexts. We recommend Communities of Practice, psychological supports, acts of care (including self-care), wellbeing initiatives, and arts-based practice as potential mechanisms to support educators and learners.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85191164349&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3390/covid4030022
DO - 10.3390/covid4030022
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85191164349
SN - 2673-8112
VL - 4
SP - 334
EP - 348
JO - COVID
JF - COVID
IS - 3
ER -