Knowledge sharing among academics from Egyptian medical schools during the COVID-19 pandemic

TL;DR

This study explores how academics from Egyptian medical schools shared knowledge about COVID-19 during the pandemic.

Contribution

The study provides insights into knowledge-sharing behaviors and barriers among Egyptian medical professionals during the pandemic.

Findings

Most participants found scientific publications and international websites as reliable sources of COVID-19 knowledge.

Over 46% of participants sometimes shared their knowledge, but lack of time and organizational culture hindered sharing.

About 75% of participants shared knowledge related to treatment.

Abstract

Sharing knowledge among scientists during global health emergencies is a critical issue. So, this study investigates knowledge-sharing behavior and attitude among staff members of 19 Medical schools in Egyptian universities during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Across-sectional study was conducted using a web-based questionnaire. A total of 386 replies from the 10,318 distributed questionnaires were analyzed. Descriptive statistics were computed using SPSS (version 22) to summarize the demographic data. Inferential statistics such as the independent and chi-square test were used to achieve the study aims.

More than half of the respondents (54.4%) indicated that their levels of knowledge of COVID-19 were good. Most participants (72.5%) reported that scientific publications and international websites were the most reliable source of their knowledge concerning COVID-19. More than 46% stated they sometimes share their knowledge. The lack of time to share and organizational culture were the most important factors that could affect their knowledge sharing. Additionally, about 75% of participants shared knowledge about treatment.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12909-024-05502-2.

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