(Iowa City, IA) — Nearly two-thirds of the aggravated assaults reported on the University of Iowa campus in 2020 happened at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. Public Safety Department co-director Mark Bullock said, “of the 49 aggravated assaults that were reported in 2020, 32 of them occurred at the U-I-H-C.” Bullock says we’ve been meeting weekly with U-I-H-C leadership to determine how we’re going to address this long term. The hospital’s C-E-O has recently called the pandemic “an endurance test” for health care workers. Bullock says staff shouldn’t have to endure assaults as they care for sick patients and his department has secured space for a Medical Campus Safety Center and will assign four new officers to provide security at the hospital. A hospital in Branson, Missouri recently provided up to 400 staff members with panic buttons on their employee badges after violent attacks against health care workers there tripled in the past year.
