Factors That Influence Healthcare Professionals’ Online Interaction in a Virtual Community of Practice

S. Kendall; Faith Ikioda; F. Brooks; Anna de Liddo; Simon Buckingham Shum

doi:10.4236/sn.2013.24017

Factors That Influence Healthcare Professionals’ Online Interaction in a Virtual Community of Practice

S. Kendall, Faith Ikioda, F. Brooks, Anna de Liddo, Simon Buckingham Shum

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Abstract

Online technologies have facilitated the development of Virtual Communities of Practice (virtual CoPs) to support health professionals collaborate online to share knowledge, improve performance and support the spread of innovation and best practices. Research, however, shows that many virtual CoPs do not achieve their expected potential because online interaction among healthcare professionals is generally low. Focusing on health visitors, who are UK qualified midwives or nurses who have undertaken additional qualifications as specialist public health workers in the community, the paper examines the factors that influence online interaction among health visitors collaborating to share knowledge and experience in a virtual CoP. The paper makes suggestions for how to improve online interaction among health professionals in virtual CoPs by increasing the size of membership in order to take advantage of both posting and viewing contributions, facilitating moderation to improve networking among geographically dispersed members groups and improving the topic relevance in order to stimulate contributions.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	174-184
Number of pages	11
Journal	Social Networking
Volume	2
Issue number	4
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.4236/sn.2013.24017
Publication status	Published - 8 Oct 2013

Keywords

Virtual Community of Practice; Health Visitors; Online Interaction; Collaboration

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10.4236/sn.2013.24017

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Copyright © 2013 Faith Ikioda et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
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abstract = "Online technologies have facilitated the development of Virtual Communities of Practice (virtual CoPs) to support health professionals collaborate online to share knowledge, improve performance and support the spread of innovation and best practices. Research, however, shows that many virtual CoPs do not achieve their expected potential because online interaction among healthcare professionals is generally low. Focusing on health visitors, who are UK qualified midwives or nurses who have undertaken additional qualifications as specialist public health workers in the community, the paper examines the factors that influence online interaction among health visitors collaborating to share knowledge and experience in a virtual CoP. The paper makes suggestions for how to improve online interaction among health professionals in virtual CoPs by increasing the size of membership in order to take advantage of both posting and viewing contributions, facilitating moderation to improve networking among geographically dispersed members groups and improving the topic relevance in order to stimulate contributions.",

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AU - de Liddo, Anna

AU - Buckingham Shum, Simon

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N2 - Online technologies have facilitated the development of Virtual Communities of Practice (virtual CoPs) to support health professionals collaborate online to share knowledge, improve performance and support the spread of innovation and best practices. Research, however, shows that many virtual CoPs do not achieve their expected potential because online interaction among healthcare professionals is generally low. Focusing on health visitors, who are UK qualified midwives or nurses who have undertaken additional qualifications as specialist public health workers in the community, the paper examines the factors that influence online interaction among health visitors collaborating to share knowledge and experience in a virtual CoP. The paper makes suggestions for how to improve online interaction among health professionals in virtual CoPs by increasing the size of membership in order to take advantage of both posting and viewing contributions, facilitating moderation to improve networking among geographically dispersed members groups and improving the topic relevance in order to stimulate contributions.

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Factors That Influence Healthcare Professionals’ Online Interaction in a Virtual Community of Practice

Abstract

Keywords

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