Georgetown University's Health Systems Administration

Rubric for Evaluating the Root Cause Modeling Assignment

When you are learning a topic, you learn better by teaching it. To accomplish this goal, from time to time we ask you to comment on another student's work. To help you do so we provide a rubric that you need to follow closely. This rubric applies to the project on Root Cause modeling.

Where do I get the student's work?

It is your responsibility to arrange to receive a student's work. You can find other students currently in class by visiting a password protected page. You can exchange your work with the same student. Keep in mind that you are required to make your comments within 48 hours of receiving a copy of the work. Because voice files are large, mail a compact disk to the student involved; emails will not work well as many service providers have limits on size of attachments to emails.

Where do I send the comments?

Email responses to the following questions to both the student from whom you received the assignment and to the instructor. Make sure that each section is properly identified. Maintain a copy for yourself.

What should be included?

Administrative

Make a comment in every section. Follow the structure provided and do not provide free-form comments.

What is the title of the work being reviewed?

What are the initials of the student whose work is being reviewed?

What are your initials?

What date you received the work (use format MM/DD/YY)?

What is your email (in the format name@server.com)?

What is the email of the student that provided you with the work you have reviewed?

Presentation format

No Adjectives
Do not use adjectives in your comments.
Instead, describe why you liked a piece
by giving details of what you liked.
Full sentences

Always write full sentences, with a subject,
verb and object. Always end with a period.

What worked well in the presentation? Discuss at least one aspect of the project that was presented well (provide a complete sentence ending with a period. Make sure the sentence has a subject, verb and an object.)

Was the voice recording easy to hear?

The volume of the recording changed unnecessarily
The recording was not loud enough to easily understand the content?

Was the visual presentation appealing?

The font used in Slides was too small and difficult to read
The numbers reported had more digits than the justified by the precision these estimates were obtained (Maximum of 2 digits after a period)
The narration was verbatim from the slides
The use of color and graphics did not help the narration and and did not strengthen the central points being made?

Was the length of the presentation appropriate?

Too many slides used, typically because the presentation did not focus on the analysis and spent a great deal of time describing the field or making introductory comments.
There were too many or too few slides. 5-7 slides were expected.
Narration of some slides exceeded 2 minutes

Was privacy of sources maintained?

References to name of organizations was not removed
Slide discussing whether the slide show can be posted was not present
Personal information was not stripped from the presentation
Expert was not identified by initials

Content

What worked well in the way the model was constructed? Please use complete sentences with appropriate punctuations.

Was the root cause model correctly organized?

The sentinel event was clear and the related causes were distinct
The indirect causes were not defined in such a way as to logically lead to only one direct causes. When indirect causes lead to several direct causes, it is difficult to track the various effects. Often a more judicious use of terminology can divide one indirect cause to two indirect causes that have distinct and separate influences on the direct causes.
Key causes and effects were present in the model.

Was the model verified?

The various assumptions of conditional independence in the model were not identified or verified by querying the expert or a database
The reverse probabilities were not calculated or were not checked against an external database/literature.
The predicted probability of sentinel event was not within ball park of known experience with this rare event.
The face validity of the model was not reported

Suggestions for Improvements

Contrast the work done with your own effort to model a sentinel event. Describe what you learned from the work you have reviewed that could help you in the future? Please use complete sentences with appropriate punctuations.

Suggest what the student might want to do to further improve the assignment. Please use complete sentences with appropriate punctuations.

Before you submit your work, check that all entries are correct sentences, with a subject, verb and object. Always end with a period. You can include this page in the email you send.