Self-supportive virtual communities

Learning Communities in healthcare is one approach in supporting practitioners and nurses to improve skills and knowledge and consequently support patients more efficiently. Web based learning communities provide additional capabilities such as global distribution of participants and asynchronous participation. The learning process in such communities is flexible and distributed, but still uni-directional: knowledge is transferred from professors to students of medicine, medical advices and support is directed from care providers to patients. In virtual Communities of Practice, apprentices ask questions and experts respond. Knowledge is created and distributed in a collaborative process, since all participants contribute their experience. In healthcare communities, especially in patient-centered ones, effort is spend on informing, training and supporting patients to become self-managed. Families, doctors, nurses inside the community target their contribution towards the patient. Howev...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: IJWBC
• Authors: Iraklis Varlamis, Ioannis Apostolakis
• Keywords: Community, IJWBC 2010, Learning Communities, Nurses