Healthcare Knowledge Management: Issues, Advances and Successes (2007)

Healthcare practitioners and managers increasingly find themselves in clinical situations where they must think fast and process myriad diagnostic test results, medications and past treatment responses in order to make decisions. Effective problem solving in the clinical environment or classroom simulated lab depends on a healthcare professional's immediate access to fresh information. The healthcare practitioner must learn to effectively manage knowledge while thinking on their feet. Knowledge Management (KM) holds the key to this dilemma in healthcare, placing value on the tacit knowledge that individuals hold within an institution and making use of IT to free up collective wisdom. This book explores the nature of KM in contemporary healthcare institutions, providing readers with an understanding of approaches to the critical nature and use of knowledge by investigating healthcare-based KM systems. This book demystifies the knowledge management process and demonstrates its applicability in healthcare, offering contemporary and clinically relevant lessons.