Keynote 3: Knowledge management in times of information overload

ACPE UPN: 0475-0000-14-003-L04-P. A knowledge based activity.

Abstract:

Health care professionals may experience different feelings when considering the large number of new publications in their area, and might feel that keeping up to date is not possible anymore. We are chasing after the ideal of keeping up to date with all that information and evidence in our field, without realising that we are clinging to an imaginary possibility. The ethical dilemma becomes clear at once: the responsibility of each individual professional to strive for best-informed decision-making on the one hand and the simultaneous paralysing helplessness that ‘for sure you might not know everything’ on the other hand! When is ‘knowing enough’ really enough? Is adequate and sufficient knowledge only thinkable as a result of high specialisation? The paradox is, that while there has never been as much information available to us as in these current times, health care professionals still have so many open questions and have to constantly deal with uncertainties in their fields. Having accepted this situation of information overload and the truth of this paradox, the key challenge now is to find successful ideas, strategies and solutions.　 An idealised informational environment would provide each health care professional with fast access to specifically edited and selected information, which is useful, valid, unbiased and not redundant.

Teaching Goals:

• to illustrate the concept of information overload with regard to health care disciplines,
• to discuss implications and consequences of information overload and to present coping strategies,
• to discuss possible solutions that health care professionals may apply to address information overload.

Learning Objectives:

After the presentation the participant should be able:

• to outline the main reasons for and specifics of information overload in health care,
• to apply coping and selection strategies in the situation of overwhelming information.