Root Cause? Yes of course … but then what?

ABSTRACT

[EXCERPT]. Analyzing the causes of unsafe care can reduce the number of ‘near misses’ (incidents that may cause harm to patients) and adverse events (that actually produce harm). This is an important mandate for health care organizations committed to providing a safe environment for patients. Although guaranteeing absolute safety in all interventions is not always possible, hospitals and other health care institutions implement safety practices and surveillance methods to understand how these unsafe incidents occur. In many cases, these incidents were not generated by a single cause; and remote causes are as significant as more proximate ones...