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There is no doctor or medical practice that hasn't experienced a problem or a crisis in either the care of patients or the business aspect of the practice. Unfortunately, most doctors have few or no skills in crisis management or nonclinical problem solving. This task often is left to the office manager or the practice's medical director. This article discusses the use of the root cause analysis and how it can be applied to nearly every medical practice. The "five whys" concept is a way to try to find the causes of potentially complex problems. When done properly, this strategy will help you to get to the root cause of many issues so that it can be addressed, rather than just focusing on symptoms of that problem.
KEY WORDS: Problem solving; medical practice; healthcare practice.
hen done properly, the "five whys" strategy has been shown not only to be effective, but also to be easy to use on a wide range of issues throughout many medical practices. It also can be combined and used with a variety of other techniques used to identify and solve workplace problems.
The five whys technique, which began in Japan at the Toyota Motor Company, is based on a scientific approach to problem solving. It has been applied through just about every type of industry around the world and could easily be used in the healthcare profession as well.
In the five whys process, you ask "why?" at least five times to get to the root cause of a problem. The process starts out with a problem that is affecting the practice, and then keeps asking why things happened until the root cause of the issue has been identified.
One of the best ways to get a good understanding of the five whys is to look at examples of how it has been explained with an example from the automotive industry. The following example is commonly used-how to discover the root cause of a car that will not start. The initial problem is "The car will not start." From there, the five whys are asked:
* Why won't the car start? Answer: The battery is dead.
* Why is the battery dead? Answer: The alternator is not working properly.