Physicians' attitudes towards knowledge transfer and sharing

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PurposeThe role of medical and health organizations within their communities has been altered to include knowledge services as a basic issue facing the current era of complexities as related to health. Knowledge transfer (KT) can provide the right vehicle for transferring the needed knowledge through different means suitable to each group of receivers, including patients. This study aims to identify the management of activities that help in facilitating KT (the environment), the groups or individuals with when the respondents are communicating, the frequency and type of communications that respondents share with others, the effective forms of communications they use, and the knowledge and learning instruments which are used to transfer and share knowledge.Design/methodology/approachThe study focuses on how health organizations in the Sultanate of Oman view their corporate knowledge and utilize it to improve practices and subsequently reinforce quality standards, while sustaining the image of learning organizations. Based on that, the study attempts to gain a comprehensive picture of the process of KT to show how physicians at two hospitals look at the knowledge of its participants and to discover how participants are willing to share, transfer and receive knowledge.FindingsThe results indicate that junior physicians suffered from work overload and senior ones had negative attitudes and were unwilling to share knowledge. In addition, social activities at both places were not strong enough to encourage the communication process among physicians to share insights and reduce medical errors.Originality/valueThe paper provides a comprehensive overview of the process of KT in two hospitals.