Reference no: EM133862744
Problem
The research report chosen to review is titled "Root Cause Analysis: A Pediatric Case Study." This case study utilized the root cause analysis (RCA) to determine if an eight-year-old who lost the use of his right hand could have been avoided. The identified problem is an eight-year-old presented to the emergency department who suffered an IV extravasation, leading to necrosis and major loss of function in his right hand (Haney, 2020). Since this problem had already occurred, its best to utilize a reactive problem-solving framework. A root-cause analysis is the best framework to focus on the organization-level system and process failures as opposed to individual-level failures (Haney, 2020). The root-cause analysis determined and categorized the causes into six different groups. These groups were communication, training, fatigue/scheduling, environment/equipment, rules/policies/procedures, and barriers. Team members involved were members of leadership from various departments such as quality, risk management, nursing, and ancillary. Additionally, personnel with knowledge of the processes and systems were involved too (Haney, 2020). Get the instant assignment help.
The problem-solving framework, root-cause analysis, played an important role in identifying several areas of opportunity for this organization. The RCA helped to define specific actions each stakeholder can take to improve the system or processes. These actions will help to minimize the chance of this type of harm from reoccurring in the future. In conclusion, it was determined that nursing staff need to be reeducated around communication and reassessment when patients verbalize pain/discomfort (Haney, 2020). The facility needs to enforce compliance with education and actively assess nurse-to-patient ratio to better balance patient acuity (Haney, 2020). I agree the framework selection of a root-cause analysis was the best option for this research. A reactive problem-solving framework was the best fit because this event had already occurred. Because of the complexity of the healthcare system, it is unlikely an adverse event would occur because of one singular cause (Haney, 2020). For this case study, it was beneficial to determine if the failures occurred at the system and organizational level. This framework uses the systems approach to identify errors between humans and a complex system as well as problems within the system that could contribute to this outcome (PSNet, 2019).
Task
1) How would the quality initiative in the research report change if it had used the tracer methodology instead?
2) How important is the selection of a problem-solving framework to the design, implementation, and results of a quality initiative?