An article that helps clear up the confusion between corrective action and preventive action is in the Ombu Library. Many people fall into the “language trap” because they want to prevent a detected problem from happening again. Unfortunately, this does not agree with the definitions in ISO 9000 family of quality management standards. In that family there is a distinction between a detected nonconformity and a potential nonconformity which carries over into corrective action and preventive action. The article explains the difference between preventive action and corrective action and illustrates the difference with examples.
You can read the article in the CAPA Systems section of the library.