This happened last week. If I were at home my normal routine since my brother-in-law (BIL) is staying with us is to take him to dress his wound at the local Klinik Kesihatan (KK). It has been two months and every time we were at room 13 my BIL was dressed by either a couple of trainees from the local learning institutions and resident hospital assistants. All in all, around 6 of them. In all the occasions I was in the room with them watching and got to understand their work and them better. The way they dressed the wound was almost similar albeit a little bit slower by the trainees. In the room almost always there a senior male supervisor but he was busy with administrative tasks. You cannot miss him. He looks young with his slick haircut like in the ’50s, shining with cream and comb neatly. It was quite long at the back like my hair. Naturally, I could blend and be his soulmate if I wish. He rides a big Kawasaki cruiser to work that he parks just outside the lab. I will name him as Mr Cool here.
This was the routine for the dressers and they perform what they have learnt and experienced. I thought that was it until last week when we waited for quite sometimes before we were called in. There was no one in the room when we entered. Then, walked in from the other side of the treatment room none other than Mr Cool. He was alone manning the station as well as administering the patients. No wonder we had to wait for quite a bit. We remarked to him asking the obvious, was he alone today? He replied that the rest was somewhere. With that he quietly started to dress the wound, as he peeled off the old bandage of my BIL’s leg he narrated that there was still a lot of blood came through. Once the rest of the bandage came off he waited and did not wipe the blood as what normally the others would have done. He only wiped at the edge of the wound. He did not say anything at first until he realised we were wondering why. He explained that most with the new technique would wipe the old blood clean. However to him, based on his experience the wound, since it was quite a big section of the foot, should be left dried before dressing it back with a new set of bandage. According to him, the dried blood would help for the new skin to form. My BIL was just amazed at what he just said and loudly said why did not the others do that. My thought straight away said that’s a valuable tacit knowledge! A positive deviance right in front of me. More than amazed, I was delighted by the serendipity. What more surprising was went Mr Cool said he had just another few weeks before retiring. We stumbled upon critical tacit knowledge that day that the KK did not have a clue to what they were missing and about to lose. This is unfortunately quite prevalent in organisations in Malaysia. Especially, the government sector. We have lost a lot of valuable tacit knowledge. Even if we were to document (codify) this type of knowledge you probably only would capture about around 30% of it. Worse, less if you just spend time making sure all the grammar make sense and try to synthesise it too much. Lost in translation not far from being the truth. The best way to capture tacit knowledge is to capture it tacitly (personalisation). In other words to retain it within the social network of people or staff of the organisation.
The KK should either ask Mr Cool to really mentor and coach his staff. Develop a program so that he could teach and mentor the trainees. Or even him being assigned apprentices to hang around him for a year or two before his retirement. Having said that we also need to be mindful of the culture in the organisation for the choice of the right intervention for effective tacit knowledge capturing.
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