A recent IMCA Safety Flash focuses on an incident, in which an experienced cook in the galley badly injured his hand when his knife slipped, to provide lessons learned.
The incident
The incident occurred in a vessel alongside at Christmas. The cook was preparing meat when his knife slipped and jabbed the top left part of the palm of his left hand, causing a serious laceration.
As a consequence the cook needed surgery to repair three damaged nerves.
What went wrong
- The cook used no PPE – butcher’s gloves.
- The meat was not at the ideal temperature for cutting with minimum force.
- Cutting was done by both pushing and pulling of the blade.
- The risk of the knife slipping was neither assessed nor mitigated.
Lessons learned
- Cut away from the hands or the body.
- Use appropriate PPE in the galley.
- Did the injured person feel pressure to carry on ? A person working alone also has “Stop work authority“
- Experience is not necessarily a fail-proof barrier or mitigation against risk.
