Knowledge management enablers affecting patient care: The perspective of registered nurses in South West Nigeria

Stephen Mutula,Olateju J Ajanaku

doi:10.4102/sajim.v23i1.1387

Abstract

Background: The productivity of healthcare institutions is impacted by the nursing workforce and plays a vital role in the provision of effective and efficient patient care. Knowledge management plays a vital role in nursing practice. This study seeks to extend the frontier of knowledge by addressing the paucity of literature on knowledge management in nursing care delivery in Nigeria.Objectives: The study empirically identified crucial knowledge management enablers from extant literature and investigated their influence on patient care in clinical nursing.Method: A cross-sectional survey design using a stratified sampling method was employed. A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect quantitative data from 196 registered nurses in a selected teaching hospital in South West Nigeria. A total of 186 valid responses were analysed using structural equation modelling (SEM).Result: The result of this study indicated that there is a direct and significant relationship between information technology (IT) and patient care. Organisational structure and organisational culture did not directly affect patient care. However, together with IT support, the knowledge management enablers were found to significantly affect patient care in clinical nursing.Conclusion: There is a need for nursing management to develop a flexible organisational structure and knowledge friendly culture including the implementation of functional technical infrastructure, to leverage knowledge management effectiveness in patient care in teaching hospitals in order to facilitate and strengthen service delivery by nurses.

Highlights

Mobile health applications refer to software tools that can assist users to monitor their health conditions through smartphones and tablets
Cost-effective healthcare for patients is a national priority (Hamine et al 2015). It was found by Goyal and Cafazzo (2013) that a lack of self-management skills by patients, unavailability of personalised education and clinical inertia have led to serious complications, exhaustive resource usage and very low quality of life for people living with diabetes
Forgetting to inject insulin as and when required brings about a rise in a patient’s blood glucose to unsafe levels, which can lead to serious health complications and additional financial expenditure related to insufficient self-management (Årsand et al 2012; Goyal et al 2015)

Summary

Introduction

Mobile health applications refer to software tools that can assist users to monitor their health conditions through smartphones and tablets. The potential of mobile health applications to improve healthcare is very good, with at least half a million users making use of them. People living with diabetes could deal with their illness by injecting themselves with insulin for a required number of 4–6 times each day to maintain their blood glucose levels to the required body and control levels (Khansa et al 2016). While this strategy has been compelling and is still being utilised by patients today, the system depends on the patient’s memory. Forgetting to inject insulin as and when required brings about a rise in a patient’s blood glucose to unsafe levels, which can lead to serious health complications and additional financial expenditure related to insufficient self-management (Årsand et al 2012; Goyal et al 2015)

Objectives

Discussion

Conclusion