Learning Teams versus RCA - Insights from Healthcare
Description
Welcome to Season 6 and the 129th episode of the podcast show HOP Into Action.
Today, I reflect on a research article from the Journal of Patient Safety detailing an evaluation of different incident investigation methods within a large United Kingdom National Health Service (NHS) hospital. The study compares the outcomes of Learning Teams with the traditional Root Cause Analysis (RCA) approach for adverse healthcare events. The authors found that Learning Teams generated significantly more actions and a higher percentage of system-focused actions, which are considered more effective compared to RCA. Furthermore, qualitative interviews revealed that Learning Teams foster a more open and less blame-focused culture and involve a wider range of staff than RCA, leading to more robust, system-level solutions for preventing future incidents.
United States
