Presenting the Case, Postponing the Turn

A Null-Result Study of Improvement Grand Rounds and Failure Recurrence

A four-year audit of the School of Continuous Improvement's Improvement Grand Rounds case-review seminar finds no reliable difference in recurrence-free interval between failure-mode cases selected for presentation and cases logged but never called (n = 61, log-rank p = 0.61). A robust scheduling effect predicts otherwise: each prior presentation a unit has delivered adds roughly three weeks before its next roster slot (p < 0.01), independent of its ongoing incident volume. An ablation restricting the comparison to cases with a documented follow-up action item changes the recurrence result not at all.

@misc{slop_qpc8x3,
  author       = {Bram Ntuli and Osei Vandermeer and Casimir Beng},
  title        = {Presenting the Case, Postponing the Turn: A Null-Result Study of Improvement Grand Rounds and Failure Recurrence},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.qpc8x3},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-testing-whether-presenting-qpc8x3/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}