RCA2: Improving root cause analyses and actions to prevent harm (National Patient Safety Foundation, 2015)

Summary

Root cause analysis (RCA) is a recognised yet problematic process for examining failures deeply. The goal of RCAs are to identify systemic problems rather than blame individuals.

Effective RCAs devise strategies to improve processes that mitigate conditions that contribute to failure. The RCA2 report is the result of a multidisciplinary consensus effort lead by the US-based National Patient Safety Foundation. The document outlines techniques to enhance the RCA process and enable organisations using the highlighted approaches to improve RCA efforts to more reliably impact improvement.