Questions
What is the difference between Prevention and Barrier in risk mitigations?
Answer
Both, prevention and barrier are risk mitigations.
- Preventions prevent a failure mode from occurring.
- Barriers prevent the effect from occurring, once the Failure Mode occurs.
Here is an example:
An error in beam geometry is a Failure Mode and introduces the risk of a wrong dose distribution. A morning check with a myQA Daily device is a Barrier preventing wrong dose distributions. It detects the failure mode (wrong beam geometry) and prevents it from creating the effect.
Trending daily QA test results over a period of time to predict service intervention is a Prevention. It can give early warnings to prevent the Failure Mode from occurring.
Often a Barrier is a ‘late’ mitigation and might lead to costly consequences. The Failure Mode is active and there is almost no time to react. Treatments might even be postponed.
Preventions help to anticipate and act in time with less impact to the daily business.
myQA PROactive encourages risk management teams to always take both different perspectives of mitigations into account.