Fishbone Diagram

---

A Fishbone Diagram is called the Ishikawa Diagram or Cause and Effect Diagram. The reason it is called A Fishbone Diagram is because it looks like the shape of a fish skeleton. The Fishbone Diagram is a tool use in continuous quality improvement to find possible causes for a problem or event.

Case Title or Subject
Completing the fishbone diagram doesn't take long. The team or individual needs to ask the question Why 5 times in the process.

Try this example: 
Problem: Patient not taken back to their room after radiology procedure in a timely manner. The average wait time is 20 minutes.

Fill in each section of the diagram
Effect: Patient wait after radiology test is 20 minutes. Desirable wait time: less than 5

Machinery: No wheelchairs available, Longer time to take images than expected

Methods: Using patient elevator only, imaging mostly performed at night

Materials: Notification of patient needing transportation via phone in office, not but imaging room

Manpower: Night shift has lower staffing needs so imaging staff must transport their own patients

Management: From using the Fishbone Diagram, one can find out the causes and work to change processes in order to have the desirable outcome.

For more information on this diagram:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishikawa_diagram