Root Cause Analysis Video Tip: Conduct Real-Time Peer Reviews

TapRooT® Co-Creator Mark Paradies shares the some best practices for conducting peer reviews. Watch it above, and print out the notes below for future reference:

You don’t want to wait until you’ve finished your investigation to conduct a peer review. We’ve seen a lot of resistance to change at this point, since so much work has already gone into the investigation. Instead, conduct peer reviews at various stages of the investigation.

Here are four stages that are great times to evaluate investigators, and some guidelines on what to look for:

1. After Creating Summer SnapCharT® – Is the SnapCharT® thorough enough or do we need more interviews & data?

2. After Defining Causal Factors – Are they at the right end of the cause-and-effect chain? – Was a Safeguards Analysis conducted? – Were all the failed safeguards identified as causal factors?

3. After RCA and Generic Cause Analysis – Did they use their tools (Root Cause Tree®, Root Cause Tree® Dictionary, etc.)? – Did they find good root causes? – Did they find generic causes? – Did they have evidence for each root cause?

4. After Developing Corrective Actions – Use corrective action helper to determine effectiveness of corrective actions.

You may not want to conduct these peer reviews during every investigation, because it can become time-consuming. Ask these questions for new investigators and during major investigations. Another pro tip: Use your most experienced investigators to conduct peer reviews. In addition to improving the quality of your investigation step-by-step, you also gain the opportunity to sharpen the investigation skills of the investigators and the reviewers.

Join us in two weeks for another Root Cause Tip video, this time from TapRooT® Instructor Dave Janney.

Click here to learn more about the TapRooT® System.

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Was this tip helpful? Check out more short videos in our series:

Do Better Investigations with Dave Janney (Click here to view tip.)

What Makes a World-Class Root Cause Analysis System with Ken Reed (Click here to view tip.)

TapRooT® & Healthcare: Getting the Most from Your Sentinel Event Investigation with Ed Skompski (Click here to view tip.)