A South Korean hospital stored a patient’s severed toe in a kitchen refrigerator alongside drinks and condiments for about two weeks, until his family found it during a visit.
The toe was in a disposable porridge container in the lower part of the fridge at a long-term care hospital in Seoul, next to soybean paste, drinks and other items marked with patients’ names, the broadcaster KBS reported on Tuesday.
It belonged to a man in his 60s with an intellectual disability who had been living at the hospital for a decade, cared for there by his family, it added.
His family were told in March the toe had come away. When they telephoned the hospital the following day, staff said the man had fallen while being moved in a wheelchair for a bath, and that the toe, already affected by necrosis caused by a skin condition, had been severed as a result.
The family said they were never told about the foot-ulcer diagnoses, although it had been recorded in the hospital's nursing notes since December. The man’s daughter said she only discovered the state of his foot in early March and understood why the toe had detached only after reading the nursing notes.
Asked where else the toe might have been kept, a hospital official told the family in a recorded telephone call that as a long-term care hospital it did not have a suitable container.
South Korea's Wastes Control Act requires medical waste to be kept in designated containers, and storing it with food may breach food sanitation law.
The hospital said the nurse responsible had kept the toe in the refrigerator in a hurry to deal with the situation, and that it was later disposed of properly.
After the broadcast of the report, the health ministry said it would ask the local government to open an administrative investigation into the hospital.
In a similar case reported earlier, the amputated leg of a patient at a long-term care hospital in Incheon, west of Seoul, was thrown out in a rubbish bag and later found at a recycling facility.
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