29 Sep 2009

Body left for four days in Sydney hospital

12:21 pm on 29 September 2009

A body was left to decompose for four days in the Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney because a worker forgot about it and went home.

A hospital spokesman says a family had viewed the body in a room in the morgue complex at the hospital earlier this year.

But a worker responsible for returning the body to the morgue, forgot to do so and went home.

The ABC reports the body was not discovered for four days. The spokesman says the next-of-kin was told about the incident at the time.

He says "individual human error" was to blame and the incident would not have happened if correct procedures had been followed.

Policies have since been reviewed.