A first principle of maintenance (and in my opinion is this applies to medicine as well) is that "run to failure" / "do nothing" is often the appropriate action.
Take the transmission in your car. Something like that often has a short infant mortality period where it is more likely to fail (under warranty if you buy the car new), and if it makes it past that initial period it has a very low chance of failure until the probability of failure starts to rise near the end of service life. If you were worried about your transmission failing and as a result you have a new transmission installed every year, you would actually cause the likelihood of a failure to massively increase because every time you put a new part in there's a chance you do the replacement wrong, or there's a manufacturing defect somewhere so it experiences infant mortality. The right choice for most people is to drive until the car starts having problems.
Choosing the right thing to do requires you to balance the potential consequence of doing nothing with the actual or potential consequences of doing the thing. If the actual consequences plus the weighted potential consequences of doing the thing outweigh the weighted consequences of doing nothing, then you do nothing.
The same concept I think applies in healthcare as well. The common cold has negligible consequences most of the time, so we would never consider cutting people's noses off to prevent it, or injecting people full of morphine and antibiotics, because all those things have big negative consequences and likely won't have a big chance of doing any good. The right thing to do is basic hygiene to prevent it and basically no medical interventions if you do get it unless there's a good reason besides "I have a cold and I don't like it"
"We should *do something*" is sometimes a dangerous thought and can lead to spending a bunch of effort and maybe money doing something that actually makes things worse. Also, every single intervention comes with risk there wouldn't have been if you didn't do that thing. In maintenance and medicine, every time you intervene there's a chance you walk away from something -- or someone --- who was working correctly and isn't when you walk away. Even good technicians and good doctors can have this happen to them. Just have a bad day, just have something unexpected come up, it doesn't take much.
Take the transmission in your car. Something like that often has a short infant mortality period where it is more likely to fail (under warranty if you buy the car new), and if it makes it past that initial period it has a very low chance of failure until the probability of failure starts to rise near the end of service life. If you were worried about your transmission failing and as a result you have a new transmission installed every year, you would actually cause the likelihood of a failure to massively increase because every time you put a new part in there's a chance you do the replacement wrong, or there's a manufacturing defect somewhere so it experiences infant mortality. The right choice for most people is to drive until the car starts having problems.
Choosing the right thing to do requires you to balance the potential consequence of doing nothing with the actual or potential consequences of doing the thing. If the actual consequences plus the weighted potential consequences of doing the thing outweigh the weighted consequences of doing nothing, then you do nothing.
The same concept I think applies in healthcare as well. The common cold has negligible consequences most of the time, so we would never consider cutting people's noses off to prevent it, or injecting people full of morphine and antibiotics, because all those things have big negative consequences and likely won't have a big chance of doing any good. The right thing to do is basic hygiene to prevent it and basically no medical interventions if you do get it unless there's a good reason besides "I have a cold and I don't like it"
"We should *do something*" is sometimes a dangerous thought and can lead to spending a bunch of effort and maybe money doing something that actually makes things worse. Also, every single intervention comes with risk there wouldn't have been if you didn't do that thing. In maintenance and medicine, every time you intervene there's a chance you walk away from something -- or someone --- who was working correctly and isn't when you walk away. Even good technicians and good doctors can have this happen to them. Just have a bad day, just have something unexpected come up, it doesn't take much.
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