Mitigating Barriers to Patient-centred Knowledge Sharing - A Case-study of Knowledge Sharing Problems in the Collaboration of Traditional and Western Practitioners in Chinese Hospitals

This paper reports a research study that aims to mitigate and overcome barriers to the sharing of patientcentred knowledge in the interprofessional collaboration of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and Western Medicine (WM) professionals in Chinese hospitals. This research adopted a Grounded Theory (GT) approach as the overarching methodology to guide the analysis of the data collected in a single casestudy design. A public hospital in central China was selected as the case-study site, at which 49 informants were interviewed by using semi-structured and evolving interview scripts. Through the analysis of the interview data using GT analysis methodology, 11 KS barriers emerged. With a further conceptualisation of the KS barriers identified, it became clear that KS is mainly hindered by philosophical and professional tensions between TCM and WM practitioners. Therefore, in order to improve KS and mitigate the two types of interprofessional tensions, three strategies are proposed based on the findings of this study, namely: (1) formalising KS processes and exploring effective communication channels; (2) establishing specific interprofessional training schemes and programmes; (3) eliminating imbalances of professional power and statues and creating conducive KS environment.