From crisis to confidence: how After Action Reviews help improve the response to acute health events, at regional and hospital levels (2026)

Summary

Despite its proven ability to deliver fast, cost-effective and impactful learning, After Action Reviews (AARs) remain significantly underutilised in healthcare contexts. This study describes the use of AAR to illustrate the strengths of this structured learning approach and to promote its wider use.

Content

The authors provide a narrative synthesis of the findings, drawing on field experience and document analysis from two AAR contexts: (1) The ‘micro’ context: in hospital settings to improve patient safety and team performance as experienced within the NHS in England. (2) The ‘macro’ context: in health system settings to enhance preparedness for public health emergencies as used by WHO.

Findings include the following:(1) where good practice should be repeated, such as house-to-house vaccination, the provision of consistent messaging for all teams and early communication with family members; (2) where gaps should be closed such as knowledge about procedures to be followed if a patient disappears from a ward, full vaccination of all healthcare workers and community confidence in vaccination.

The comparison of the similarities in the process in both contexts and the challenges experienced provides insight into the value of the approach and is designed to support other healthcare contexts to adopt the approach successfully