Risk Treatment

At this stage, an organisation must have reached a point the RM process, in which the ‘perceived risk’ has now become a risk that is unacceptable. Options are put forward and plans are drawn in order to combat or severely reduce the identified risk(s). This process can have positive or negative outcomes.

Positive outcomes include reducing the likelihood, reducing the consequences to the organisation, possibly sharing the risk with other stakeholders in order to have the problem rectified sooner (this can include utlising other emergency services, or outsourcing the consequence, as in the case of insurance), and sometime avoiding the risk altogether.

Negative outcomes include changing the risk in order to have it fall into a different severity category; this is done by not totally fixing a problem, just reducing the incidents severity or likelihood of occurrence or even bypassing the risk altogether so that the likelihood of occurrence is reduced or even stopped.

For example, in Ambulance Practice, paramedics were found to be assaulted on occasion while waiting at the scene of a violent patient for police. One risk treatment that was put forward, was that Paramedics who are called to an assault, never attend the scene without police being in attendance first. The secondary risk that this risk treatment may introduce is the potential for the patient will then deteriorate while the paramedics are waiting for police.