Which term describes the proactive assessment to identify potential failure modes before they occur?

• A. Root cause analysis
• B. Reactive maintenance
• C. Failure Modes and Effects Analysis
• D. Post-incident review

Answer: (C)

Failure Modes and Effects Analysis is a proactive assessment that identifies potential failure modes before they occur. It brings together a cross-functional team to examine each component or step of a process or product, asking how it could fail, what the consequences would be for the system or patient, how severe those consequences would be, how likely the failure is, and how detectable it would be before harm happens. By scoring severity, likelihood, and detectability, the team prioritizes risks and implements preventive controls, then revisits the analysis to verify effectiveness. This approach contrasts with retrospective methods like root cause analysis, which investigate failures after they happen, or post-incident reviews, and with reactive maintenance, which repairs after a failure rather than preventing it.