Report: Ohio nurse didn’t know she had disposed of kidney

Associated Press

COLUMBUS

A nurse who accidentally disposed of a living donor’s kidney during a transplant said she didn’t realize it was in chilled, protective slush that she removed from an operating room, took down a hall to a dirty utility room and “flushed down a hopper,” according to a report released by health officials Monday.

The nurse said she didn’t realize the kidney was put in the sterile, semifrozen solution because she had been on a break, with a different nurse in her place, when a surgeon made that announcement during the Aug. 10 transplant at the University of Toledo Medical Center, according to a review conducted by the state for the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Hospital administrative staff members interviewed Aug. 21 hadn’t determined how the nurse took the 13-gallon bag of slush, meant to extend the kidney’s viability, past several members of the medical staff without their noticing a problem, the report said.

It said poor oversight and communication and insufficient policies were factors in the kidney’s disposal, which prompted the voluntary, temporary suspension of the hospital’s living-donor kidney transplant program and reviews by health officials and a consulting surgeon hired by the hospital.