Clinical knowledge sharing self-efficacy among healthcare professionals: A commentary

Introduction

Today, knowledge is a source of power and advantage[1] and is a valuable asset for organizations[2] and a unique asset for employees, which brings them positive performance and job security.[3] Knowledge sharing (KS) is a voluntary act[4] in which people share their knowledge, experiences, and skills with others.[5] In fact, KS has an effect on organizational innovation and productivity.[6] KS, especially in the clinical context, is more important due to saving patient's lives, patient's safety, and reducing costs; therefore, “clinical knowledge sharing (CKS)” is a new concept.

CKS is the process of effective sharing of knowledge obtained by healthcare professionals based on experience, new pieces of evidence, research, and evaluation.[7] Considering the effective role of KS in improving the performance of organizations, KS is particularly important in the health context because it significantly increases the quality of care and patient's safety[8] and provides the achievement of an efficient system in hospitals and educational and treatment centers involved in clinical processes to make the best clinical decisions.[9] KS has been evaluated from various individual, group, and organizational aspects,[10] but human resources are considered the most valuable organizational capital; so, the managers should give enough motivation to health workers to actively share knowledge to achieve competitive advantages and the main goals of knowledge management in the organization.[11] According to Albert Bandura's viewpoint, motivation in individuals can be achieved through self-efficacy (SE). SE means that what a person does in a series of behaviors depends on the beliefs that he has about himself about successfully accomplishing such an action.[12,13] In fact, Bandura considered SE as a key factor and influential issue in human activity.[12,14] In his belief, SE is effective on people's motivation to achieve goals.[13] Therefore, it is very important to pay attention to SE for CKS to be more effective.

Description of the view

Considering the role of SE in a person's belief and perception of his abilities and its great effect on his performance[15] and finally its effect on improving organizational performance[16] on the one hand and the effect of KS to achieve organizational goals[17] on the other hand, we intend to point out its important role in the performance of healthcare professionals by conceptualizing “clinical knowledge sharing self-efficacy (CKSSE).” The research studies show the role of SE in KS in other contexts with or without mediating effects, since the beliefs about SE are universal in nature, which means that they exist among all humans and in different conditions,[15] so it can be said that they have the ability to generalize clinical context as well. Concerning the meanings of CKS and SE,[7,12,13] we can provide this meaning for CKSSE: the belief of healthcare professionals in successfully carrying out the processes related to the effective sharing of knowledge in the clinical context based on what they have.

It seems that a set of factors can be effective in CKSSE, especially in the clinical context, some of which are mentioned below.

Health of employees: One of the factors affecting the KS of employees is their health. The better the employees of an organization have physical and mental health, the more interest and motivation they have in KS in the organization and the more dynamic the flow of KS. For example, people with high SE have more motivation and interest in work and work harder than people with low SE.[15] The results of Wang et al.'s[17] research showed that increasing the well-being of employees increases their intention to share knowledge. In fact, high SE increases employees’ motivation to share their knowledge largely. Therefore, managers, especially in the health system, are advised to pay more attention to strengthening the SE and the health of employees by considering different strategies.

Creative SE and motivation: When employees’ internal motivations are high, performing processes related to routine job tasks will be better in them effectively, and their behavior will be less influenced by external factors of the work environment and more influenced by individual factors.[18] Individuals with internal motivation are more inclined to actively share knowledge and will gain more satisfaction in this process.[19] By sharing knowledge, employees with high internal motivation can be driven to creativity in the work and more successful in performing job tasks, and new ways of thinking can be provided for them.[20] In fact, creative SE leads to a person's ability to produce creative output and can stimulate a person's internal motivation to do creative work.[21]

Benevolent leadership: Benevolent leadership refers to the comprehensive and long-term care of leaders toward the individual well-being of their employees.[22] The effect of KS on individuals is like a “double-edged sword”; on the one hand, by sharing knowledge in the organization, a person reorganizes and integrates his knowledge, and new knowledge is created for him.[6] However, after KS, others dominate the individual's knowledge and the advantage of the individual's knowledge will be lost by diminishing the competitiveness;[23] so, KS leads to the “loss.”[24] From this view, the role of managers in creating confidence and providing job security to employees is emphasized. Therefore, managers can focus on creative work and thus strengthen and improve the feeling of creative SE in the individual, so that from this point of view, the voluntary participation of people flows in the organization without any worries.

Creating trust between coworkers: The role of trust between colleagues in the health context has a positive effect on the KS behavior of people, among which the mediating role of psychological safety is clear. The effect of trust between coworkers has an effect on their KS behavior. At the same time, sharing knowledge also creates trust.[25]

Knowledge self-efficacy: Knowledge self-efficacy (KSE) moderates the relationship between individual factors such as trust, reputation, and reciprocity, and consequently, it affects a person's KS behavior. KSE increases the effectiveness of reputation, and this increases the KS behavior. In fact, people who gain fame and credibility through online forums and communities and have higher KSE are more inclined to share knowledge.[26]

At the same time, factors such as individual success and attitude, workplace feedback, and team activities can also contribute to CKSSE, which itself needs other research studies. Therefore, to increase the CKSSE of healthcare professionals, several prerequisites are necessary, some of which are related to individual characteristics and some to the context of the health system.

Conclusion

It seems that to increase the sharing of clinical knowledge and achieve SE in this field, the health system should pay special attention to the SE and its promotion among healthcare professionals. It leads to an increase in trust between clinical staff, their creativity, interest in the job, and more effectiveness of prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation activities and managing resources. Also, effective and benevolent leadership, promoting the clinical knowledge of specialists, and special attention to the physical and mental health of healthcare professionals as SE factors in sharing clinical knowledge provide a suitable platform for increasing trust of healthcare professionals in the managers to bring them job safety to share their knowledge in the health system. The issue of CKSSE can be the source of many research studies, especially in conceptualization, theorizing, modeling, and tool-making for health researchers.

Financial support and sponsorship

This study extracted from Ph.D thesis entitled “Identification and prioritization of factors related to the clinical knowledge sharing of medical specialist working in educational-treatment hospitals affiliated to the Ministry of Health and Medical Education in Iran” with the code of ethics IR.MUI.RESEARCH.REC. 1399.552 is approved by the Vice-Chancellor of Research and Technology of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences.

Conflicts of interest

There are no conflicts of interest.