A Narrative Review of Methods for Causal Inference and Associated Educational Resources.

Background And Objectives: Root cause analysis involves evaluation of causal relationships between exposures (or interventions) and adverse outcomes, such as identification of direct (eg, medication orders missed) and root causes (eg, clinician's fatigue and workload) of adverse rare events. To assess causality requires either randomization or sophisticated methods applied to carefully designed observational studies. In most cases, randomized trials are not feasible in the context of root cause analysis.