Articles

Articles

Image of blocks being placed in a perfect patten in a process. Rethinking Process Mapping in Healthcare

Rethinking Process Mapping in Healthcare

The Process We Think We Have vs. The Process We Actually Use In healthcare, the distance between policy and practice is rarely zero. Standard operating…

Image of construction barrier in orange with the word "stop" in front of it. Barrier Analysis

Beyond Human Error: Why Your Safety Investigations Must Focus on Failed Defenses

Understanding Barrier Analysis and the Systems That Were Supposed to Protect Your Patients When something goes wrong in a healthcare setting: a medication error, a…

Image of a partially erased arrow pointing up and a bolder yellow arrow turning to the right

What Changed? The Most Underused Question in Healthcare Investigations

When healthcare organizations investigate adverse events, near misses, healthcare-associated infections, medication errors, or patient safety incidents, the focus often centers on identifying what went wrong…

Image of a Fault Tree Analysis diagram

Thinking Like an Engineer in a Healthcare World: Using Fault Tree Analysis to Understand Complex Failures

When a serious patient safety event occurs, healthcare organizations often search for “the” root cause. Investigators may identify a communication breakdown, a missed assessment, a…

Image of a timeline with arrow pointing to the right a circles marking where events happened on the timeline. The Missing Link Between What Happened and Why It Happened

The Missing Link Between What Happened and Why It Happened: Why Chronology Matters in Root Cause Analysis

In healthcare investigations, teams are often under pressure to identify causes quickly. Following a patient harm event, healthcare-associated infection, medication error, or near miss, the…

Image of fishbone diagram. Why Fishbone Diagrams Often Create Long Lists but Few Insights

Why Fishbone Diagrams Often Create Long Lists but Few Insights

The Fishbone Diagram, also known as the Ishikawa or Cause-and-Effect Diagram, is one of the most widely used tools in root cause analysis. It appears…

Image of 5 post-it notes with the word "why" written on them around a post-it note with a question mark. When the Five Whys Finds the Wrong Root Cause

When the Five Whys Finds the Wrong Root Cause

The Five Whys is one of the most widely taught root cause analysis tools in healthcare (Ohno, 1988; Serrat, 2017). The concept is simple: start…

Image of a guy smiling with lots of gifts with a lady looking at him enviously with 1 gift in her hand. Why Comparison at Work Triggers Envy and How It Quietly Shapes Performance

Why Comparison at Work Triggers Envy and How It Quietly Shapes Performance

Workplace envy is the quiet discomfort that arises when you compare your progress, recognition, or opportunities to someone else’s and feel that you are falling…

Image of a man sitting at his computer with another man helping him. Leadership Confidence: Why Leading Without Being the Expert Feels So Uncomfortable and What Leadership Actually Requires

Why Leading Without Being the Expert Feels So Uncomfortable and What Leadership Actually Requires

Leadership confidence is the ability to guide people, make decisions, and hold responsibility even when you do not have all the answers or technical expertise…

Why High Bundle Compliance Doesn’t Always Mean Low CLABSI Risk. Image of a healthcare worker in PPE and a virus molecule.

Why High Bundle Compliance Doesn’t Always Mean Low CLABSI Risk

Central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSIs) remain one of the most closely monitored healthcare-associated infections because of their severity, preventability, and impact on patient outcomes (Centers…