Newly hired Stanford surgeon involved in medical malpractice suit alleging wrongful patient death

Sunhee Kim — a clinical assistant professor of surgery who joined Stanford School of Medicine in 2025 — is under investigation by Massachusetts’ Board of Registration in Medicine (BORIM) for medical malpractice related to the death of Daniel Janco, a thoracic patient under her care as a resident at St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Boston in 2022.

Kim allegedly attempted to insert a chest tube in the wrong side of Janco’s body using a scalpel. Witnesses told The Daily that Kim attempted this procedure without receiving her patient’s consent, communicating with other medical staff in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), calling her attending physician or applying an anesthetic. The procedure caused a cardiac arrest and Janco’s consequent death at the age of 73, according to an external medical report ordered by the Janco family’s lawyer. 

Garry Ruben, Chief of the Section of Vascular Surgery at Holy Cross, conducted the report through a review of signed affidavits from Donna Janco, Daniel Janco’s wife, Mariah Black, an ICU nurse who was present and Stephen Wood, a nurse practitioner and the Director of Advanced Practice Providers in the Medical Intensive Care Unit (MICU) at St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center, who was present. The report also reviewed medical records relating to the incident. 

“I hate to think she’s teaching anybody,” said Donna Janco, Daniel’s wife. “She’s a professor at Stanford, one of the most prestigious medical schools in the country, and this is what she’s going to teach them.”

According to Donna and her daughter Holly Janco, Kim advised Janco’s family against an autopsy and failed to report the circumstances of Daniel’s death to the medical examiner. Reports beginning in March 2022 led to an ongoing investigation by BORIM into Kim’s alleged malpractice, as The Boston Globe previously reported. Janco’s family also filed a civil action lawsuit against Kim in Feb. 2025.

Speaking to The Daily, Kim strongly denied the claims against her, saying they were false and defamatory, though she declined to address specific accounts or claims. Kim also said she made Stanford Medicine aware of the incident during her hiring process.  

“Stanford School of Medicine does not comment on the details of personnel matters,” wrote Stanford Medicine Chief Communications Officer Cecelia Arradaza  “We want to reaffirm our deep commitment to providing the safest, highest-quality care to every patient and family we serve.”

Accounts of ICU malpractice

Daniel Janco arrived at Holy Family Hospital after complaining of difficulty breathing on Jan. 8, 2022. In response to the visit, his medical team scheduled a pigtail catheter surgery at St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center for early February. 

Dr. John Wain, a thoracic surgery attending physician at St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center, successfully performed a right-sided pigtail catheter chest tube placement on Feb. 21. Janco was then placed in the ICU, where he appeared to both his family and doctors to be in high spirits. 

“It was the husband I knew,” Donna said, recalling speaking to him after the procedure. According to Donna, some of Daniel’s last words included asking her to “make [him] an eggplant parm and smuggle it into the hospital tomorrow.”

Stephen Wood, one of the Registered Nurses (RNs) in the ICU at the time of Janco’s death, painted the hour leading up to his death as a “chaotic” scene. Wood was the code leader at the time.

Kim, along with resident Oseogie Okojie, responded to a request for a general physician to address Daniel’s swollen eye, entering the room at approximately 6 p.m. 

The response from Kim, however, “fell below the accepted standard of care for the average qualified surgical resident physician,” according to Ruben.​​ He also stated that Janco’s situation was “non-emergent” which typically calls for elective, non-life-threatening procedures.

Kim repeatedly asked for what she called “a needle with the thing on the end,” Ruben wrote in his testimony, to which the rest of the medical team was unsure how to respond. 

“[Kim] didn’t tell [Janco] what she was going to do, didn’t consent him to treatment and didn’t provide any anesthesia,” Wood said. “She just cut into his chest.” Ruben’s testimony described Janco screaming in pain as Kim told him to hold still. According to Wood, Kim also ignored requests he made for her to call the attending physician during the procedure. 

After Kim’s procedure failed and Janco experienced a cardiac arrest, Wood said he took charge of resuscitation efforts, which were unsuccessful. Because the left side of his chest was “completely normal,” Janco “basically got stabbed to the chest,” Wood said, comparing the procedure to “getting mugged.”

Janco was pronounced dead at 6:55 p.m. 

“Blood everywhere”: The aftermath of Janco’s death

Upon arriving at the hospital following Daniel’s death, Donna and her daughter, Holly, were escorted into a conference room where Kim informed them that he died of a pulmonary embolism, an internal blood clot found in the lungs.

Wood, however, said he did not witness procedures typical for a pulmonary embolism: “I saw her perform the wrong sided procedure and I saw him immediately start coughing up blood shortly before going into cardiac arrest.”

Holly and Donna described a jarring scene in the ICU. “There was blood everywhere,” Holly said. “There was blood on the ceiling, the floors, the walls, on the equipment behind him. The nurse that was in the room at the time was extremely emotional.” They observed that the bedsheets had been changed, Daniel’s gown was fresh and there was dried blood on his chest.

“It appeared as if they attempted to clean up a much larger scale catastrophe,” Ruben wrote in his testimony. “Mr. Janco’s appearance was distressful. His face and his chest were about five times the size of his normal body, and his eyes looked like they popped out of his head.”

As is typical, the medical team held a debrief after the cardiac arrest. According to Wood, Kim chose not to attend. She also did not attend the risk management meeting with the medical team, he said.

When the family inquired about an autopsy, Kim advised against the request “since [Janco’s] death was so tragic, [the family] wouldn’t want to put him through that process,” according to Ruben. An autopsy was not automatically ordered because the medical examiner was told that Daniel’s death had been caused by a pulmonary embolism.

After reading Dr. Kim’s note, Wood said he was surprised to find that “it failed to include that she had attempted a needle aspiration on the left-side of his chest, or a left-sided chest tube placement prior to Mr. Janco suffering cardiac arrest.”

Malpractice case arises, Kim moves to California 

Wood and the other nurse present during the procedure filed formal complaints with the Board of Registration in Medicine (BORIM) in March of 2022. The medical malpractice case remains open, though not publicly available.

BORIM only publicly releases reports on doctors once investigations are closed. While active, associated records and developments are inaccessible.

St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center filed for bankruptcy in May 2024 and was ultimately acquired by Boston Medical Center (BMC). This transition opened the door for Woods to contact the Janco family in January with his account of medical malpractice.

“It’s like you’re reading a horror novel,” Holly said. “It’s sick.”

Meanwhile, Kim was completing her fellowship at BMC. She received her board certifications from the American Board of Surgery in general surgery and surgical critical care in 2025. 

The Janco family began their lawsuit against Kim and the rest of the medical team in Feb. 2025.

Kim traveled across the country to begin working at Stanford Medicine sometime after July 2025.

A spokesperson for the School of Medicine did not directly respond to questions about when they became aware of Kim’s alleged malpractice, or what steps Stanford Medicine takes to protect patients from medical malpractice.

Kim called The Daily shortly after an initial request for comment. Kim said that she disclosed the details of the procedure to Stanford during the hiring process.

Arradaza previously wrote to The Daily that Stanford Medicine conducts “a thorough and thoughtful faculty recruitment process” for clinical assistant professors at Stanford. This process includes “objective review and assessment of clinical, teaching and research credentials” and “comprehensive reference and background checks,” she wrote. According to Arradaza, a specialized background check is required for faculty with clinical privileges.

Stanford Medicine’s Chief of General Surgery Electron Kebebew and Chair of the Department of Surgery Mary Hawn did not respond to a request for comment. 

Donna and Holly plan to move forward with their ongoing suit. 

“My dad was killed,” Holly said. “He should be here.”

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