COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — 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 on Monday.
The nurse said she didn’t realize the kidney was put in the sterile, semi-frozen 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 and obtained by The Associated Press through a records request.
