Quality improvement (QI) methods have been introduced to healthcare to support the
delivery of care that is safe, timely, effective, efficient, equitable and cost effective. Of the …

Background Efforts to improve the quality, safety, and efficiency of health care provision
have often focused on changing approaches to the way services are organized and …

Attempts to learn from high-risk industries such as aviation and nuclear power have been a
prominent feature of the patient safety movement since the late 1990s. One noteworthy …

Health care is everywhere under tremendous pressure with regard to efficiency, safety, and
economic viability-to say nothing of having to meet various political agendas-and has …

Physicians and physician trainees are among the highest-risk groups for burnout and
suicide, and those in primary care are among the hardest hit. Many health systems have …

Maternity care continues to be associated with avoidable harm that can result in serious
disability and profound anguish for women, their children, and their families, and in high …

Background The '5 whys' technique is one of the most widely taught approaches to root-
cause analysis (RCA) in healthcare. Its use is promoted by the WHO, 1 the English National …

Objective To assess the strength of root cause analysis (RCA) recommendations and their
perceived levels of effectiveness and sustainability. Design All RCAs related to sentinel …

Although it is probably the best‐known prospective hazard analysis (PHA) tool, failure mode
and effects analysis (FMEA) is far from the only option available. This article introduces one …

Objective Though healthcare is often exhorted to learn from 'high-reliability'industries,
adopting tools and techniques from those sectors may not be straightforward. We sought to …