Solução de problemas em uma emergência hospitalar: avaliação dos métodos A3 e análise de causa raiz

Considering the importance of problem solving for process quality maintenance, this work has the objective to evaluate two continuous improvement methods commonly used for problem solving: A3 and Root Cause Analysis (RCA). To achieve that, the two methods were applied in the same process, of prescription and medication, at the emergency room of an university hospital. The results were verified accordingly to the following criteria: the total number of improvement actions proposed, implementation difficulty, replication possibility along the departments of the hospital, the time required to apply the method, the number of people involved and the need of training for the team. Results show that, in the evaluated context, RCA resulted in more improvement actions, which had, on average, better evaluation in the criteria of implementation difficulty and replication possibility.