Patient dies after hospital's monitoring alarms shut off

An Iowa man 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 VA Central Iowa Healthcare System hospital. 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.