Knowledge sharing in a physician practice group: an exploratory case study

摘要

Existing research on physician knowledge sharing has been predominantly focused on functional collaboration across different medical specialties. This study represents an early effort to analyse empirically how peer physicians in the same practice group collaborate horizontally with each other to share clinical knowledge and improve care quality. Based on the Theory of Planned Behaviour, and through semi-structured interviews to eight physicians of an anaesthesia practice group in a community hospital, this study indicates that when physicians have developed positive attitudes towards knowledge sharing, have received external encouragement from 'important others' and have received necessary infrastructural support, they appear to engage actively in knowledge sharing behaviours. Additional managerial recommendations on how to operationalise the research findings and encourage knowledge sharing are also discussed in the paper.