A Phenomenological Exploration of the Impact of COVID-19 on the Medical Education Community

Researchers explored the medical education community's adaptation and reevaluation of personal and professional roles amid the COVID-19 pandemic via a hermeneutic phenomenological study. They held 27 semi-structured interviews of Canadian, American, and Swiss medical trainees, physicians, graduate students and PhD researchers between April and October 2020. Data analysis applied van Manen's four lifeworld existentials, assessing participants' physical, spatial, relational and temporal experience of COVID-19. Grief appeared to be the common underlying factor in participants' experiences of forced cancellations, social distancing and virtual work. Participants felt grief most often as a loss of habitual structures and routines that unsettled their certainty, alternating between grief and relief as the pandemic progressed. Subjects noted strong feelings of empathy from colleagues and clinician teachers, who exhibited more flexible expectations and support. Tensions between grief and relief seemed to engender critical reflection about dramatically reconceptualizing sociocultural values. Participants engaged in more activities to support new structures and limits conducive to the pandemic landscape, acknowledging that these developments may be transitory. "As the pandemic continues — and once it subsides — we encourage medical education workplaces to foster conversations that promote meaningful work-life integration, considering lessons learned amidst this global crisis," the authors recommend. They also support further investigation into how work structures might foster a wellness culture in the medical education community.

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