involved, so that the interpretation of results and
tests will go right away to the right person who is
able to interpret them correctly. The several similar
investigations by different patient care providers
must be coordinated so that there is no need to do
the same investigations all over again when the care
giver changes. Physicians and nurses on every level
of healthcare must be given proper education and
training so that patients can rely on them in spite of
who is in charge. When doing so, maybe the patients
would also start telling the truth about their
symptoms. The patients could also tell about all their
symptoms better if they could rely on the
confidentiality of the ICT systems, so that cannot
misused by anyone else than the physician in charge.
Finally, the physicians' and nurses' negative attitude
problems towards ICT systems and child patients
must also be taken care of because they can affect
the patient care situation, and also the care providers
themselves. The reasons for the knowledge
management problems may just be too much work
with too many patients with limited knowledge at
hand, which makes the care providers tired,
frustrated or exhausted in their work. On the other
hand, they can also be a consequence of motivation
problems, or missing right knowledge in the work
they are currently doing. This can be seen as
uncertainty in their work, which is full of restrictions
and perhaps a feeling that there is no possibility to
influence one's own work, but it is dictated from
above.
There are several limitations in this study. First,
the results may not be readily applicable to other
departments, as the phenomena were atypical.
Second, the use of only two departments in a central
hospital affected our findings, and thus
generalization of the results can be difficult, but not
necessarily impossible. Third, we performed a
limited number of interviews, and only the chief
physician of the paediatrics neurology department
was interviewed personally. Our analysis provided
better understanding of the different types of
knowledge management problems and their
relationships with each other affecting to patient
safety which lead to better understanding of
problems in healthcare. This is the main research
contribution of our study. Finally, our study was
supported with a study conducted in medical domain
(de la Tassa et al., 2013) concerning the importance
of patient safety and this supports our findings of
knowledge management problems.
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