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Thursday, November 7, 2013

Iowa Veteran died in VA hospital after alarms were just shut off

Veteran died after alarms were shut off
Nurse testifies he disconnected equipment monitoring blood oxygen levels of Vietnam veteran Michael Deal
Des Moines Register
Written by
Clark Kauffman
November 7, 2013

An Iowa veteran died at a Des Moines hospital in March after a nurse deliberately shut off the alarms used to monitor patients’ conditions, newly disclosed state records show.

Michael Deal, a 65-year-old Army veteran from Spirit Lake, died March 29 at the Veterans’ Administration Central Iowa Healthcare System.

Bernard Nesbit, a registered nurse in the hospital’s telemetry unit where patients are kept for continuous monitoring, was subsequently fired for having turned off an array of alarms that were hooked up to all of the patients in that unit.

At a recent public hearing dealing with Nesbit’s request for unemployment benefits, the hospital’s human resources specialist, Greg Smith, testified that due to unspecified past disciplinary issues, Nesbit had been working on a “last chance agreement” with the hospital when the incident took place.

He said an internal investigation showed Nesbit had turned off the alarms, one of which was designed to alert nurses to any drop in the patients’ blood-oxygen levels.
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2 comments:

  1. It is rumored that Mr. Nesbit was only unlicensed for two years, and that he is working in Iowa again as a nurse. Mr. Deal is still dead.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's true. He's an RN at Mahaska Health in Okaloosa, IA

      Delete

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