The Covid19 pandemic presented challenges for students and teachers to engage and create good learning environments. In this situation, new opportunities for learners and teachers to engage and learn have evolved. Historically, communities of practices have been developed and used to help solve complex and dynamic challenges in society. The idea is that people get an opportunity to work together to solve a specific challenge or task. Here we present a pedagogical community of practice (CoP), QuaranTrain, where students from different countries have developed a platform for co-creation and sharing material and strategies for better health during a period with social distancing. This student-led and self-organised CoP have created a framework for learning that our health care educations can be inspired by and use in their programs. We conclude that out of this challenging situation, new and creative ways of learning emerged, which can enrich and develop health care education.

The fundamental role of ontology, epistemology, and ethics is widely recognised across the healthcare professions. Yet what is less known in physiotherapy is how ontology and epistemology potentially undermine the ethical intentions of our theories and practices. In this article, we draw on the work of 20th-century philosopher Emmanuel Levinas to highlight this problem. Particularly Levinas’s ethical critique of ontology and the associated notion of thematisation enable us to highlight a violence that takes place in the philosophical foundations of physiotherapy. Using the overarching aims of physiotherapy, the theory and practice of diagnosis, and the notion and enforcing of professional identities as examples, we additionally show how this violence consequently pervades physiotherapy theory and practice. By exploring a range of critical and practical implications, we finally show how an application of Levinas’s critique of ontology additionally opens toward an otherwise physiotherapy grounded in a renewed understanding of self, other, and their relation. With this, we hope to highlight the core value and critical need for a deeper engagement with the work of Levinas in relation to all aspects of physiotherapy, and particularly its understanding and implementation of ethics that is so fundamental to its practice and a cornerstone of physiotherapy education.

Background: Communication is fundamental in collaborative physiotherapy practice. Students develop understandings of what constitutes ‘good’ communication through the formal, informal and hidden curricula. Understanding how students understand communication and how this is influenced by the curricula can help educators consider how best to enhance communication knowledge and skills. Aim: This study explored how physiotherapy students conceptualised clinical communication. Methods: This study was underpinned by a social constructionist epistemology. Data consisted of fifteen assignments, completed by students as part of their coursework. Assignments were analysed using the Listening Guide which prompted attention to how the different ways students understood communication and how these understandings were constructed. Results: Communication was understood as uni-dimensional. It was presented as an act done to the patient by the physiotherapist, with little attention to the patient’s communication and involvement in the interaction. Through communication, physiotherapists demonstrated and reinforced their expertise while simultaneously positioning the patient as the recipient of care and knowledge. Conclusion: Understandings of communication reflect broader constructions of physiotherapy and the role of the physiotherapist. These also reflect tensions in the curricula. Enhancing communication in student education requires all parties to understand, value and critically reflect on how communication is constructed and enacted.