How to Formulate High Quality Lessons Learned: A Rapid Review

Lessons learned convey information and experiences that were studied when carrying out projects or policies, in order to improve procedures and practices in other contexts. Thousands of scientific articles present lessons learned, but, in the vast majority of cases, without describing how they were produced and how rigorously they were developed. As part of a project aimed at deriving lessons from hospitals’ resilience in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic in five countries (the HoSPiCOVID project), we systematized the process for producing these lessons. A rapid review was conducted to identify the best ways of developing quality lessons learned (QLLs). From 1,870 documents initially identified, 18 were retained. Their analysis identified three principles to guide the process of developing QLLs and 11 steps to complete the process. This rigorous procedure can be followed by teams wishing to improve the quality of the lessons learned that they formulate.