December 30, 2015 | Barb Carr

Healthcare and the 3 Standard Corrective Actions

Are you asking two questions?

In all industries people struggle to create effective, measurable corrective actions. Many times we fall back to our standard ways of thinking and do what has been comfortable no matter the effectiveness we have seen in the past. In our courses we discuss the three “Standard” corrective actions:

Training. Retrain everyone, not just those involved.
Policies/Procedures. Write new policies or procedures or make the current ones longer.
Discipline. Send a message to everyone else that a behavior is unacceptable whether or not there is fault.

When these are the standard actions, many times we have recurrence of events. I am not saying these actions can’t work, but many times if they are default answers it is much like putting a round peg in a square hole.

In this article a hospital in Hong Kong presents an overview of their findings and recommended actions to a Sentinel Event at the hospital. Review the Corrective Actions and ask these two questions:

1. Do they meet the needs of the system based on the findings?

2. Do you see a correlation with our three standard corrective actions above?

Maybe there is a pattern… let us know your thoughts.