Chef's Arm and how to deal with it
April 9, 2019 12:58 PM   Subscribe

My daughter has just started chefing in a commercial kitchen and is steadily accumulating her badges of honour: a bunch of thin parallel oven burns across her forearms, wrist to elbow. Three questions: 1. What do chefs put on these burns to soothe and heal them? 2. What's the best healing product professional kitchen people swear by, something that works well to prevent infection? And 3. Is there any protective safety equipment for this like, I dunno, silicon arm guards or something?
posted by glasseyes to Health & Fitness (18 answers total) 5 users marked this as a favorite
 
Maybe something like this type of sleeve for protection?
posted by pinochiette at 1:09 PM on April 9, 2019 [1 favorite]


The last post on this thread on Chef Talk explains the procedures for kitchen burns, which are the same as other 1st, 2nd and 3rd degree burns -- run cold water over the burn, and if it's a serious burn, put a sterile bandage on it, don't do anything else. (This is the same thing the Mayo Clinic says.) Your daughter shouldn't treat for infection unless she's immunocompromised -- her immune system will do it's job.
posted by DarlingBri at 1:12 PM on April 9, 2019 [6 favorites]


1. Cold water from the tap
2. Time
3. Experience

(years of restaurant cooking)
posted by General Malaise at 1:18 PM on April 9, 2019 [6 favorites]


I think that any type of protective sleeve would likely be either unduly restrictive or overly hot - these types of burns happen from incidental contact with hot racks and things, which could probably be prevented with long sleeves, but i think most folks have made the calculated decision that the tiger stripes are preferable to working in/around sleeves.

piggybacking on DarlingBri's comment, this is probably a good exception to the old kitchen rule that anything that happens during service can be duct taped over and left to sort itself out - she'll want to keep these burns clean and theyre obviously somewhere relatively exposed or they wouldnt be there in the first place. A tattoo oriented product like Saniderm might be an option worth considering, although id personally be worried about what might happen if her Saniderm covered arm touched another hot piece of metal, like i wouldnt want melted saniderm clinging to my arm one bit.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 1:19 PM on April 9, 2019


Is she not wearing chef's whites with sleeves? I know it's trendy to wear short sleeved chef coats but the reason we wore long sleeved ones is because they provide a barrier between skin and hot things. If she's rolling up her sleeves, she should stop. And if she's required to wear a short-sleeved chef coat, she should think about wearing a long-sleeved t-shirt underneath. Really, sleeves are a chef's first defense against burns.
posted by cooker girl at 1:35 PM on April 9, 2019 [11 favorites]


I cook for a living and recently got a sizable 2nd degree burn. A friend who's a nurse recommended vitamin E oil after it finished blistering. I found that it has really helped my skin heal compared to other products I've used in the past.
posted by finally at 1:39 PM on April 9, 2019 [3 favorites]


The dermatologist for my kid's surgery said the reason ointments worked post scarring was massaging. She said any decent heavy body lotion would work, pref unscented, and the key was to massage it gently into the new skin several times a day in different or circular motions to prevent the keloids forming. She told us we didn't really need the expensive scar prevention cream so much as regular massage to prevent scar formation. It seemed to work in that the worst scar is her eyelid where I couldn't reach.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 3:25 PM on April 9, 2019 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: Tiger stripes eh? Indeed, Ive never known a professional cook who hasn't flaunted, the ones that they've got. Thanks for the answers everybody, I'll show her this page/links and talk it through with her (and probably lay in some dressings + Vit E oil.)

The kitchen is hot, her chef's jacket has short sleeves and is a polyester mix, hope she never gets a burn through it.
posted by glasseyes at 3:59 PM on April 9, 2019


1. Cold water from the tap

This is outdated advice and will aggravate a burn much more than if you apply merely cool or, ideally if it's readily accessible, warm (~body temperature) water. This study was widely reported-on when it was published, and as far as I know it's pretty well-accepted in clinical contexts that cold water in particular isn't the way to go.
posted by invitapriore at 4:00 PM on April 9, 2019 [4 favorites]


I have found that putting toothache gel on a burn does an amazing job soothing a burn. Put a bandaid on immediately after the gel. When changing the bandaid, rinse the burn with saline (mix half a teaspoon of salt with enough warm water to dissolve). Honestly, in my experience saline is the best! And I have the healed wounds to prove it.
posted by Enid Lareg at 4:17 PM on April 9, 2019


Oven mitts. She has to be disciplined about self protection. Those pans that burn, big roasting pans often have grease in them. Those burns are worse.
posted by Oyéah at 4:44 PM on April 9, 2019 [1 favorite]


Curad Germ Shield (was called Silver Solution) is aces for moist healing and pain relief for burns. Readily available; even my local grocery store has it. Personal data point; this gel kept a 5" diameter second degree burn caused by hot cooking fat on the top of my foot from getting infected, hurting much after the first few hours, and the area doesn't even have a visible scar now. Highly recommend (my brother would too, and he has a wood-fired pizza business).
posted by vers at 4:53 PM on April 9, 2019


Long-sleeved chefs coat.
posted by Grandysaur at 5:07 PM on April 9, 2019 [1 favorite]


I know commercial kitchens are hot, hot, hot. But long sleeves are the basic level of protection from burns. She's not only protecting herself from the oven racks, doors, saucepans, etc. that she is using, but also the implements and movements of other cooks. Sometimes passive protection is the most important. You can't always predict the movements of others, and accidents happen.

She may be a little hotter than her coworkers (especially in a hotter summer kitchen) with long sleeves, but if she doesn't protect herself she should expect more burns and more scars. I have a few, too, but learned to wear a long-sleeved chef's coat and roll back only the after a very painful burn on my forearm. Many of my colleagues had multiple linear (from oven racks) scars up and down their arms and hands in their determination to be a little cooler in the kitchen.
posted by citygirl at 6:32 PM on April 9, 2019 [1 favorite]


I am sadly prone to home kitchen burns, and have found major relief with hydrogel burn pads. In a pinch I've smoothed on a bit of antibiotic and saran-wrapped a pad to my arm. In addition to lessening the damage and allowing moist healing, they are amazing at reducing the dreaded day 2 pain, when the adrenaline has receded but you still need to function through things hurting. My life changed radically when I learned about Tegaderm for bad scrapes/road rash and hydrogel for burns.
posted by BlueBlueElectricBlue at 8:12 PM on April 9, 2019


Cold water and lots of it immediately will usually prevent any blistering or scarring. The heat travels into the deeper tissue for some time after contact, and if you chill it you stop that. But you have to put things down and do it now. I never got a scar in the glass studio even when I grabbed a hot pipe after chilling it for a couple minutes (though I did lose the sense of touch in a couple fingers for a week). I do have a scar from a much cooler tool when I didn’t want to interrupt my work.

It may be difficult or impossible to just put everything aside in a kitchen, though. I suspect there is some macho business going on about working through minor burns, loss of limbs, etc...
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 7:23 AM on April 10, 2019


Sleeves or bravado — SHE MUST CHOOSE
posted by wenestvedt at 2:40 PM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: Thanks everyone. So after we talked about it it turns out she's been wearing the snazzy short sleeved black KP jacket cos she likes it better - sleeves or bravado indeed! She says she's going to wear her proper chef's jacket from now on, and we'll get some sterile dressings and vit. E cream just in case. Ask resolved! All suggestions and the discussion itself really useful.
posted by glasseyes at 3:24 AM on April 12, 2019 [1 favorite]


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