Tagreed Alkaltham: Some Risks Don’t Look Like Risks in Healthcare
Tagreed Alkaltham, Transfusion Medicine Lab Supervisor at KSMC, shared a post on LinkedIn։
”Some Risks Don’t Look Like Risks
Not every risk in healthcare announces itself as an error.
Some risks arrive quietly, wrapped in routine, convenience, and familiarity.
They look like:
- Steps we skip because ‘nothing ever happened’
- Shortcuts taken under pressure
- Practices that became normal without being questioned
Over time, these patterns stop raising concern.
They stop being noticed.
In high risk environments,’almost right’ is never truly safe.
Numbers can look reassuring.
Processes can appear stable.
Yet the absence of alarms does not mean the absence of risk.
In Transfusion Medicine Lab risk does not always come from obvious errors.
Sometimes it comes from familiarity from steps repeated so often they stop being questioned.
In Blood Bank risk can also hide in assumptions:
- assuming availability, assuming urgency
- or assuming that ‘it will work this time as well’.
These risks do not persist because people are careless.
They persist because good professionals adapt, cope, and move on often without the space to question what should still be questioned.
For example: staff shortages, workload pressure, and clinical urgency often lead to quiet workarounds.
‘Let’s get through today, we’ll fix it tomorrow.’
Tomorrow becomes routine. And routine becomes normal.
The risk is not intent.The risk is normalization.
This is where leadership matters most. Not in reacting to incidents, but in noticing patterns before they become harm.
True safety leadership begins long before the incident report is written.”
Stay updated with Hemostasis Today.
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