Hunter
10/14/25
University of Iowa Health Care employees are making a more concerted effort to remove a policy that requires them to wear badges with their full names on them.
SEIU Health Care Minnesota & Iowa, the union that represents more than 4000 UIHC nurses and staff, says that employees have expressed their concerns about exposure during patient interactions.
The Gazette reports Hanna Bott, lead organizer with the Iowa division of the union, said privacy breaches have ranged from patients finding them on Facebook to having them actually show up at their residences.
In May, over 500 employees started covering their last names with SEIU stickers, after staffers for years used other ways to cover them, including white-out or another sticker. UIHC leadership responded by circulating reminders of the ID badge policy and mandating that the badges be free of personalized pins and stickers.
When contacted by The Gazette, UIHC leadership said the “professional appearance and photo identification badge policies that support both patient care and employee safety” have “been in place for several years and are reviewed regularly.”
The union has started a petition to immediately revoke the current policy and allow the last name on the badge to be replaced with their last initial. UIHC officials said, “As part of the ongoing policy review process, we are currently evaluating our badge naming practices based on employee feedback and evolving industry standards.”