Knowledge Doesn't Sleep at Night - The Night Shift of Knowledge Management
- Michal Blumenfeld Sagi
- 7 days ago
- 4 min read
Have you ever worked a night shift? Personally, I endured quite a few night shifts during my military service, reaching a glorious yet torturous peak of 36 hours of wakefulness. Believe me, the word "fatigue" takes on new meanings.
When I think about healthcare workers, who often have to work under conditions of accumulated fatigue, in a sequence of shifts packed with events, in this no-less-than-sacred profession of saving lives, I'm filled with admiration, gratitude, but also a bit of concern; goodness, how do they do it?
My childhood was filled with stories of heroism from my mother, who held various significant roles as a nurse. When I started working with a client in the healthcare field, I brought with me a deep appreciation from home and a genuine sense of purpose.
Accurate Diagnosis: A Case Study Working with a Client
It's well known and understood that we need to think about our end users from the beginning. What makes them unique? What would make things easier for them? What should we focus on? When it comes to users from the healthcare field, fatigue, pressure, and an unbearable workload are the primary concerns. When we were required to create a position paper, the primary thought was how to simplify the information, making it as accessible as possible, so that it would really stand out exactly when needed, even if the users are tired from an endless shift.
Reading Simply, Understanding Deeply
Simple, clear, and concise - okay, but there's still a significant challenge here: every medical field is a world unto itself, with infinite information. Such a position paper is intended to simplify, summarize, and make information accessible, alongside accuracy, which is crucial. You can't give up information or shorten processes. Everything is necessary and even critical.
So, how do you do it most effectively? Here are several tips:
Breaking down the text into chapters that create different stages in the process, in chronological order of the required sequence of actions.
Avoiding repetition and jumping back and forth. If there's information that repeats itself at different stages in the process, you can create links within the document.
Extracting relevant knowledge from tables loaded with information, and presenting it as clearly and concisely as possible in the body of the document. Don't worry, the tables won't disappear - they're concentrated at the end of the document, in the appendix list.
Visuals- converting tables or extensive information about complex processes into clear and eye-catching diagrams.
Providing headings for sections or chapters, and using icons that make it easy to quickly find the relevant chapter. For example:
Discharge from Hospitalization
Since most medical knowledge in the world is published in English, it's recommended to translate expressions and acronyms into the local language. It's worth using Artificial Intelligence to get expressions that sound good while still being accurate and preserving the original spirit. Don't forget to always refer to the foreign source.
Using Artificial Intelligence to find slogans or rhymes for headings of sections or processes, to make them more catchy.
Creating a cover page with a diagram that summarizes the entire process- a kind of medical poster that concentrates all the important information and serves as a roadmap for the position paper. You can design it yourself with the help of Artificial Intelligence tools, fine-tuning the details with the client, and then send it for design only when a final and approved version is ready.
You're welcome to read additional tips for integrating Artificial Intelligence into our daily work in the article “On Artificial Intelligence and Human Gamification.”
The Flexible Newsletter
Sometimes during a quiet night shift, there's a bit of time to sleep, or at least to rest and catch up on the latest newsletter...
For the same healthcare client, we created a newsletter that's published once every few months (usually before a specific conference), with updates on a professional topic. The newsletter is published on a website, allowing employees to receive updates relevant to their specific interests or in chronological order. The newsletter has a format with regular sections. However, it's a flexible platform that can host a new concept each time according to current needs, with a relatively small investment.
For example, a special issue describing past, present, and future, when there are personnel changes in management, and they want to provide a summary of the departing employee's activity, words of thanks and appreciation, and simultaneously also present the new management's vision; or a celebratory issue for the release of a round number of the newsletter’s issues, or a round period in which the newsletter is published. On the same platform, we also published a special issue on employee experience sharing in unusual situations, such as war or a global pandemic (remember we had one of those not so long ago?).
Another example is an issue that was published with a lighter focus on the employees' spouses. For the special issue, we also created a link with a charming and unusual design on the homepage.
The flexible newsletter presented as a dedicated area on the website is an available and convenient platform for regularly communicating information. This way, you can benefit from both worlds - routine and fixed format on one hand, alongside routine-breaking issues that are adapted relatively easily, creating a sense of innovation, attentiveness to employees, and timeliness.
If you still don't have a newsletter in your organization, you should launch one like this. It can be your "home" in routine and also outside of it. I invite you to get some writing tips in general in my article on writing.
And these days, more than ever, I hope that only knowledge management doesn't sleep at night, and that we all have quiet, calm, and peaceful nights!
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