Knowledge Sharing Among Health Professionals: The Case of Felege Hiwot Referal Hospital
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Date
2010-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Background: Organizations that implement knowledge sharing are raising the quality
and availability of care and increasing operational efficiency. There is a “know-do” gap:
the gap that exists between what we know and what we do in practice. As a result, failure
to share knowledge compromises performance. Ineffective routines are continued, new
approaches are not explored, and opportunities to improve efficiency are overlooked so
assessing status of knowledge sharing and factors affecting it necessary.
Objective: The objective of the study is to investigate the knowledge-sharing behavior of
health care professionals so as to identify factors that affects knowledge sharing and
propose possible solution to enhance organizational effectiveness and improve the quality
of health service provision.
Methods: A facility based cross-sectional study employing both quantitative and
qualitative methods are used from March to April 2010 G.C. A self administered
questioner is distributed to a total of 196 health professional working in Felege Hiwot
Referal Hospital during the data collection period. To supplement the quantitative study,
data is also collected by interviewing the department heads, observation and document
analysis. The data is cleaned, coded and fed to SPSS version 16, and then the data was
analyzed so as to achieve the objective of the study.
Result: The finding shows majority of the respondents are not frequently engaged in
knowledge sharing activity .The result also shows, there is lack of formal and informal
knowledge sharing opportunities. The hospital has no infrastructures which help to
facilitate knowledge sharing. The majority of respondents are not motivated to share
knowledge due to lack of incentives and poor management support of the KS activity of
the hospital.
Conclusion: knowledge sharing is one of the strategic tools that the hospital should use
to improve its performance. The management should give a great attention to it and plan
in advance like any activity. The hospital should make ready the necessary infrastructures
and implement the incentive mechanism to motivate staff and monitor its performance
routinely and take corrective actions accordingly
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Keywords
Sharing Among Health Professionals