Obligation to share knowledge

To all the CEOs and managers of the hospitals and other healthcare providers.
To all the management consultants.
To all my industry colleagues,


I love to teach. And I have come across hundreds of students who love to learn. So the association fortunately becomes fruitful.
I always feel that everyone has an obligation to share knowledge, as what you are today is because of someone who shared his or her knowledge with you and taught you something you may not have been aware of before.
And when you share knowledge, you yourself become wiser as you may realize fallacies of your practice over a period of time, and would improvise and go back to your books and other learned colleagues to gather more knowledge, and this ultimately makes you more wiser.

All said and done, I feel very disappointed when experienced professionals do not readily share their knowledge and do not readily share information and end up acting very pricey.
And pricey for what? What inventions did they do, or what new facet of knowledge they have created on their own, that they keep it to themselves as if it was their own. They forget, that if they don't take this opportunity to impart knowledge when requested, someone else would.

I feel amazed when the students have to run around from pillar to post to gather basic information in hospitals which can give them a better insight in to hospital operations.
Information sharing is avoided on the pretext of it being 'confidential' ! I come accross many students, who say that so and so hospital did not allow an interview because they found it intrusive.
Understanding how a quality assurance is in OT (good or bad) is intrusive? or how a medical records department is managed is intrusive?
On the contrary these students who labor for free can give amazing insights to the management on various wrongs, and which can be used to improve. They actually should thank these students to help them out, and for free.

On one hand we are worried how the industry will fill the large gap of managers, and skilled experienced people, and on the other hand we do not want to even let them learn.
Learning can only happen on the field. Text books can give you only limited knowledge.


I have worked with colleagues, who though are very learnerd, do not eagerly dispense their treasure of experience to many  hospital management students.
Their reason : they have struggled so much in their learning curve in colleges and otherwise, so why should they teach all and sundry so readily. What will they gain out of it? Let the student undergo the rut too.
This I feel is becoming a cycle of sorts - "You don't teach me well, I wont teach anyone else well"

Somehow I feel the treassure of experience they gather makes them feel so rich and proud, that they forget that they will soon forget what they learned if they do not practice daily. The best way to practice is to teach. Therefore in healthcare, the lecturers, or professors are most sought after by the corporate healthcare sector as they have the best knowledge and experience.

I love to share what ever I have learnt in the field of quality and operations in healthcare with any interested healthcare management student. I always found a void in teaching, though information is available. I feel much of 'teaching' is not up-to-date with current times. Many times what I wanted to learn was not taught, and was not readily shared from my teachers, or learned colleagues. I ultimately went about learning on my own a lot of things. I feel this trouble I went through should not be repeated with the others who learn from me.
I feel I have an obligation to share knowledge. And I still have to learn a lot.
I hope my learned colleagues, will understand and comply.


Sincerely,
Dr Akash Rajpal

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