(But: Don't push your shoulders past their safe range of motion in any direction. Some people can't raise their arms all the way, like I just descrbed. Some people can be hurt by pushing their arms too far across the front of the body, or too far up and back. I haven't personally seen that skating - it is more common in whitewater boating.)
The part of what I just said that is emphasized is contradicted by Bill's experience!
Apparently, it can occur to figure skaters too.
There is no such thing as a totally safe sport. If you refuse to do anything that is a little bit dangerous, you can't have any fun. Think of almost anything that is fun -
life, sports, business, romance - doesn't it involve an element of risk? With reasonable precautions, I don't think recreational figure skating is any more dangerous than most sports, and quite a bit less dangerous than some. It is even possible that you are more likely to get hurt driving to skate than while skating itself.
Bill's injury could have been prevented by a properly done fall - as I'm sure he knows. Clearly, it has not prevented Bill from continuing to skate.
BTW, in this type of injury, just as in whitewater kayaking - an arm can fairly safely be held high, or somewhat back (though generally I don't favor that much), but not both. What happens is that your arm acts as a lever, and any force on it that pulls it farther back levers the end of the arm out of the shoulder socket. That can dislocate the shoulder, and/or tear muscles in the shoulder cuff - sometimes one, then the other. In addition, when most people hold their arms high, they naturally tend to pull the arm part way of the socket, even without external force - I guess because people in the wild would typically hold their arms high to reach and pick a fruit off of a very high branch, or something like that. CCA, the perhaps the biggest paddling safety organization in the U.S., warns strongly against letting the arm go up
or back white paddling.
(Apes, and I think most higher land animals have a ligament in the equivalent to our shoulder, which prevents such dislocation, and maybe prevents the limb from going the equivalent of up and back. This lets many apes swing freely through the trees, and maybe makes it safer to run on four legs. But we lost that ligament, presumably so we could throw things like rocks and spears and baseballs, overhand.) And, in fact, we do have a corresponding ligament in our legs. Which is one of the reasons our hips are much less mobile than our shoulders.
I'm reminded of a book on rock climbing. The author said that you only get hurt climbing if you make a mistake. Oh, so I said to myself, doesn't sound too dangerous. Then, a little later in the book, the author casually mentions that all of the friends he started climbing with were dead. Oh. Maybe not quite so safe. Likewise, I remember being told that most reasonably experienced paddlers had known a few others who had died.
Very few people die skating.
But skating, like most forms of dance, involves more or less the whole body. So, of course, almost anywhere on the body CAN be injured - and if you look for people who have been injured, you will eventually find almost all body parts can be injured. That doesn't mean they all will.
I think the most important thing to do to prevent injury while figure skating is to pick reasonably snug, supportive skates, and tie your laces as tight as you reasonably can. Based on my experience as a rink guard, making sure people tied their laces tight prevented all injuries while I was on the ice during the several months that I did it. Eventually someone complained - many people don't like to be pushed to take precautions - so I stopped, and on-ice injuries resumed.