At the start of a busy treatment day, the linac has been off overnight while the CT simulator has sat idle since yesterday. You are the first therapist in, forty patients are booked, and physics is unavailable until noon. Which morning sequence follows the applicable warm-up and daily QA procedures for both machines before they are used?

Each machine needs its required warm-up before its own machine-specific daily QA, and results should be recorded when obtained. Keep both machines out of clinical use until their checks are complete. Overnight shutdown and a day of CT-simulator inactivity may trigger separate warm-up requirements; preparing one machine does not satisfy the other’s requirements. Warming up the linac, completing its daily QA, and then running CT-simulator QA before scanning still omits the CT simulator’s required warm-up. Warming both machines and completing daily QA, but logging both results only before treatments begin, delays documentation rather than recording results as they are obtained; delayed entry can weaken traceability. Warming both machines, performing abbreviated readiness checks, and recording results before clinical use substitutes abbreviated checks for each machine’s required daily QA. Such a shortened check is acceptable only if the applicable procedure explicitly defines it as the required daily QA. Exam caveat: warm-up steps, QA scope, and authorization to perform checks vary by equipment and local policy, so do not infer a universal checklist from this scenario. Practical check: consult each machine’s current procedure, confirm warm-up completion and all required QA items, verify results are within tolerance, and enter them in the designated log immediately.