6 Common Kitchen Injuries And How To Prevent And Treat Them
As much as we hate to admit it, the kitchen can be a dangerous place. Hot surfaces, sharp objects, and slippery floors are all lurking in the shadows as you prepare a delicious and amazing meal. Each year, hundreds of people with a bloody hand and an empty stomach come through an emergency room's door because of kitchen-related injuries, and many of them can be life-threatening if the proper steps are not taken. No matter how careful you may think you are in the kitchen, there's always a risk of injury, so we caught up with a couple of medical professionals to learn about the most common ones and what you should know about them.
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If you ask SUNY Downstate Medical Center's ER Dr. Michael Lanigan about what he sees in the field in regards to kitchen injuries, he'll tell you two things: burns and cuts. Nearly 95 percent of the kitchen-related injuries he treats fall under those two categories, and it's not surprising, what with all of the chopping, cutting, frying, and baking going on. In Lanigan's opinion, these two injuries should never be taken lightly, so we'll go over what you need to know about them and what the next steps are if you fall victim to one of them. The Culinary Institute of America's RN Kelly O'Connor is constantly on the look out for burns when treating students, both contact and liquid, because each have varying degrees of severity and surface-area impact. We'll go into detail about contact and liquid burns and how to prevent them.
Beyond cuts and burns, there's a few other injuries that can happen in the kitchen that can be prevented as long as you're aware of them, says Dr. Geoffrey Renk of Charleston's Roper St. Francis Healthcare. Awareness is key when working in the kitchen, and along with that, he suggests taking cooking classes to learn best safety practices, and to learn how to use a knife before even thinking about using one. We want you to be safe in the kitchen and prevent yourself from harm when cooking, so read about what you should be on the lookout for.