What were you doing at 18? Tiffany was recovering from a severe workplace incident!!

On 14 October 2008, 18-year-old Tiffany Ward sustained horrendous injuries to both of her arms when they were dragged into a rotating auger screw of a potato processing machine. Tiffany, a factory process worker, had been cleaning food scraps out of the auger when its blades were activated, quickly cutting her arms to shreds. Tiffany spent 40 minutes trapped in the machine with her arms above her head while emergency services rushed to the scene. She was airlifted to hospital where doctors performed more than 30 hours of surgery including bone and skin grafts. Although the surgeons were able to save her arm, she will never regain use of her right hand and her left hand and arm has been left with restricted mobility.

The video goes into detail of the injury she sustained and how it could have been prevented.  She also discusses how this has impacted her life, with a twist of a beautiful love story. The following points summarises how this could have been prevented.

• Induction was not provided to Tiffany which would have covered the workplace hazards, procedures and processes etc.
• Isolation was inappropriate as it allowed another worker to be able to start the machine during the cleaning process.
• No risk assessments had been carried out.  If they had been the risk of the machine being started would have been identified and eliminated.