Sharing your learning and helping others to develop their knowledge work skills

In the previous section, we considered how we can use our clinician scholarship skills to develop our own learning and implement change. Now we think about how we can share our work with others to help develop our collective skills and so build our community of practice.

Figure 1. Step-by-step process to becoming a future WiseGP – sharing your learning step

It is in the interests of patients, that as part of our professional development, we share our knowledge with our colleagues. In this way, we become part of a community of practice, a group of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it betterhttps¹. It is widely accepted that sharing examples of innovation and evidence-based practice within a network of interested stakeholders is more likely to lead to positive change to influence practice ^1,2. We know that the behaviour of medical professionals are as much shaped by the advice and support of peers and colleagues, as by high-quality scientific evidence (recall Gabbay’s mindlines)³. You, therefore, have a role in also encouraging others to develop their own knowledge work skills and in doing so, grow the community of practice.

We described a change process from QI in practice, to a research project, to implementation. We can share any/all stages of that e.g. through writing reflection blogs on our curiosity in practice, contributing to research writing, helping academic teams produce educational materials to share the results of research studies. We will look at examples of all of these in the case studies that follow.

References

1. Dopson S. FitzGerald L. Ferlie E. Gabbay J. and Locock L. No magic targets! Changing clinical practice to become more evidence based. Health Care Management Review. 2002. Vol. 27 No. 3. 35‐47. DOI: 10.1097/00004010-200207000-00005
2. Also A. Continuing Professional Development in Health and Social Care. Strategies for lifelong learning. 2nd Edition. Sheffield Hallam University. Book. Wiley-Blackwell 2013
3. Gabbay, J. and le May, A. Evidence based guidelines or collectively constructed ‘mindlines’? Ethnographic study of knowledge management in primary care. British Medical Journal. 2004. Vol. 329. 1013‐6.