At JBA, we’ve spent hundreds of hours working with fishbones. Healthcare is complex. Fishbone diagrams help us map all the components that go into a patient’s care.
For example: the procedures that lead to a successful surgery often cross many departments. A patient checks in at the registration desk. He’s passed on to the surgery floor nurses. The nurse preps him while the anesthesiologist puts the patient under. The surgeon meets the patient in the OR. In the moment, no one has the full picture. The fishbone shows us the whole picture.
With our clients at JBA, we start with our target. Maybe it’s improving patient consent for blood transfusions. We then create a fishbone to diagram all the roots causes of misinformation, confusion, or missed steps in the consent process. We end with a streamlined roadmap to improvement, seen below.
Here’s a video from the manufacturing world, where the fishbone concept originated: