A root cause analysis is a systematic approach to understanding the causes of adverse events and key in on system flaws that can be corrected, to prevent the mistake from recurring again. In short, root cause analysis helps us learn from our mistake. This is done by, laying out the series of events that led up to the error. Instead of pointing fingers on people to blame, root cause analysis focuses on the system causes. Health care accidents don’t always come from one single thing, but a domino effect of flaws in the system.
