Making health care safer: learning from social and organisational research (Day 1) - Part 3 Knowledge Flows

I also went to Curtis Olson’s session about team learning. He stressed that in practice change involved practical knowledge, experiential learning and practice-based evidence and that practioners are more than just users or customers of knowledge but should rather be seen as experimenters. He also mentioned the importance of not only having know-what but also know-how available and accessible.

I found that this resonated very well with my work around knowledge flows in healthcare design (see one of the older entries in this blog) which stresses both the importance of seeing knowledge not just as something that goes into the design process but also as something that is produced by the design process – amongst others by the practioners. My service design knowledge typology also draws attention to the fact that different types of knowledge differ in their tacit and explicit components. Something that conventional literature often neglects by assuming all knowledge to be explicit and readily sharable. However, as Curtis points out, some knowledge cannot be shared this way and rather has to be acquired through observation and experience.