Lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic. A collective autoethnography of bioethics education

Abstract The Covid-19 pandemic disrupted academic life worldwide, for both students and teachers." Then the next sentence stating the purpose of study is highlighting that its specifically internal medical students and bioethics teachers. The purpose of this study is to shed light on the collective adversity experienced by international medical students and bioethics teachers amidst the Covid-19 pandemic in relation to both personal and academic life. The authors wrote subjective memoirs that were analyzed using a collective autoethnography method to find similarities and inconsistencies between their experiences. The results consist of three different sections; falling apart, bouncing back and bioethics. ‘Falling apart’ explores the breakdown of daily lives during the initial stages of the pandemic, shown through subjective quotes contextualized through the authors commentary. The consensus is that the journey home and the move to remote education, were the two main perpetrators for the breakdown ‘Bounce back’ focuses on the authors’ rebirth after the initial breakdown, by acquiring new information about the virus, discovering substitute hobbies, like home workout or dancing, and the students learning to adjust their exam expectations. 'Bioethics’ is about how it was to learn and teach this subject during the pandemic, and how you can apply bioethical knowledge to better understand and cope with some of the pandemic’s moral dilemmas. The study presents how important bioethics is during a global pandemic, as well as the struggles of remote learning, from both the students’ and the professors’ point of view.