Hamilton acute pain service safety study: using root cause analysis to reduce the incidence of adverse events

BACKGROUND: Although intravenous patient-controlled analgesia opioids and epidural analgesia offer improved analgesia for postoperative patients treated on an acute pain service, these modalities also expose patients to some risk of serious morbidity and even mortality. Root cause analysis, a process for identifying the causal factor(s) that underlie an adverse event, has the potential to identify and address system issues and thereby decrease …