CPPS REVIEW COMPREHENSIVE
EXAMINATION GUIDE 2026 FULL Q&A
STUDY SET
◉ Your organization utilizes a "home grown" electronic safety event
reporting system that is no longer meeting the needs of the
organization. Hospital administration is asking for your opinion:
What would you do for next steps to identify a replacement system?
A.) Purchase the least expensive software.
B.) Ask Information Systems to either fix the old system or build a
new one.
C.) Poll colleagues and purchase what they use.
D.) Identify key stakeholders and perform a gap analysis of current
state to ideal state.
Answer: D.) Identify key stakeholders and perform a gap analysis of
current state to ideal state.
Performing a thorough search of available products that meet the
standards for the organization is the primary action you should take.
Once the collated information is obtained, convening a meeting with
the key stakeholders (nursing, medicine, finance, patient safety,
legal, etc.) to determine the organizational needs in relation to the
,intended financial impact and return on investment may be
required.
◉ Your hospital is considering implementing a robotic surgery
program. As a patient safety professional, you are concerned about
the potential for patient injury associated with this new technology.
The most appropriate tool or technique for assessing potential risks
associated with implementation of the new technology is:
A.) Meaningful use evaluation
B.) Failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA)
C.) Patient safety leadership WalkRounds
D.) Root cause analysis (RCA)
Answer: B.) Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA)The best
answer is FMEA.
FMEA is a prospective risk reduction strategy; ideally, it is used
before a new technology is implemented to determine how the new
technology might fail and cause harm. Patient safety leadership
WalkRounds are designed to help leaders gather facts about the care
environment and create positive relationships between staff and
administration. Root cause analysis is a retrospective tool; it is used
after a harmful event or near miss to determine what went wrong.
Meaningful use evaluation is for evaluating the success of
implementing an electronic health record.
, ◉ Why is it important to share lessons learned from RCAs?
A.) It exposes the fallibility of the clinician(s) involved.
B.) It allows others to introduce workarounds to avoid the same
situation.
C.) It allows co-workers to learn the rationale for why an event
occurred and incorporate new lessons learned into practice
D.) Sharing these events should not be encouraged because it
increases the risk of litigation.
Answer: C.) It allows co-workers to learn the rationale for why an
event occurred and incorporate new lessons learned into practice.
Sharing allows others to adopt new methods and to heighten risk
awareness. In regard to the other possible answers: The goal of an
RCA is not to place blame on individual clinicians, and workarounds
are oftentimes unsafe practices that ignore systems issues that
require fixing. Sharing lessons learned from an RCA may decrease
the risk of litigation by improving patient safety and reducing the
likelihood of an adverse event occurring again.
◉ A strategy used to overcome failure in a process is the use of a
checklist. To match the limit of working memory, a good rule when
creating a checklist is to keep the number of tasks between how
many items?
A.) 1 and 5
B.) 3 and 10
EXAMINATION GUIDE 2026 FULL Q&A
STUDY SET
◉ Your organization utilizes a "home grown" electronic safety event
reporting system that is no longer meeting the needs of the
organization. Hospital administration is asking for your opinion:
What would you do for next steps to identify a replacement system?
A.) Purchase the least expensive software.
B.) Ask Information Systems to either fix the old system or build a
new one.
C.) Poll colleagues and purchase what they use.
D.) Identify key stakeholders and perform a gap analysis of current
state to ideal state.
Answer: D.) Identify key stakeholders and perform a gap analysis of
current state to ideal state.
Performing a thorough search of available products that meet the
standards for the organization is the primary action you should take.
Once the collated information is obtained, convening a meeting with
the key stakeholders (nursing, medicine, finance, patient safety,
legal, etc.) to determine the organizational needs in relation to the
,intended financial impact and return on investment may be
required.
◉ Your hospital is considering implementing a robotic surgery
program. As a patient safety professional, you are concerned about
the potential for patient injury associated with this new technology.
The most appropriate tool or technique for assessing potential risks
associated with implementation of the new technology is:
A.) Meaningful use evaluation
B.) Failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA)
C.) Patient safety leadership WalkRounds
D.) Root cause analysis (RCA)
Answer: B.) Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA)The best
answer is FMEA.
FMEA is a prospective risk reduction strategy; ideally, it is used
before a new technology is implemented to determine how the new
technology might fail and cause harm. Patient safety leadership
WalkRounds are designed to help leaders gather facts about the care
environment and create positive relationships between staff and
administration. Root cause analysis is a retrospective tool; it is used
after a harmful event or near miss to determine what went wrong.
Meaningful use evaluation is for evaluating the success of
implementing an electronic health record.
, ◉ Why is it important to share lessons learned from RCAs?
A.) It exposes the fallibility of the clinician(s) involved.
B.) It allows others to introduce workarounds to avoid the same
situation.
C.) It allows co-workers to learn the rationale for why an event
occurred and incorporate new lessons learned into practice
D.) Sharing these events should not be encouraged because it
increases the risk of litigation.
Answer: C.) It allows co-workers to learn the rationale for why an
event occurred and incorporate new lessons learned into practice.
Sharing allows others to adopt new methods and to heighten risk
awareness. In regard to the other possible answers: The goal of an
RCA is not to place blame on individual clinicians, and workarounds
are oftentimes unsafe practices that ignore systems issues that
require fixing. Sharing lessons learned from an RCA may decrease
the risk of litigation by improving patient safety and reducing the
likelihood of an adverse event occurring again.
◉ A strategy used to overcome failure in a process is the use of a
checklist. To match the limit of working memory, a good rule when
creating a checklist is to keep the number of tasks between how
many items?
A.) 1 and 5
B.) 3 and 10
