Let’s declutter our AARs: Perfecting the final questions in an AAR (Judy Walker Associates, September 2026)

Summary

Maximising the value of AAR means getting answers to both parts of the fourth AAR question: “What have we learned?” and “What might we do with this learning? Yet the list of actions arising from an AAR can become needlessly long and this can both reduce the likelihood of the actions being completed and could add meaningless activity into an already over burdened system.

In edition 16 of her newsletter, Judy Walker reflects on how the last part of an After Action Review (AAR) should not be to add more unnecessary steps on the patient pathway or commit to new activities that have little evidence for their efficacy. It should instead  focus on a few actions that will have real impact and to make recommendations for others higher up the chain of command to be responsible for assessing.