Cartoon by Tebben Gill Lopez
By Michaela Crossen, Megan Forbes, Samantha Hart, Marilyn Peizer and Ashley Ruggiero
Imagine having a 9:30 a.m. exam that you’ve been studying for all week. You are just ready to top it off with a solid night’s sleep, but instead of drifting off peacefully, you are overtaken by the feeling that you need to go to the bathroom every five minutes, but to no avail. After drinking two full liters of cranberry juice, you are finally able to relieve yourself, only to feel an intense burning pain. All you would need to save yourself would be one pill from the health center. Too bad it’s after 8 p.m. and the health center closed. You are doomed to spend your night with a urinary tract infection.
Your only option would be to call DPS and have them tell you to either call a taxi to go to the emergency room or deal with it. Unlike an alcohol-related incident, which a student brings upon themselves, legitimate illness is often swept under the rug and left to the individual to take care of.
Students need to know that they will have secure access to medical attention 24/7. Illnesses have the ability to strike at any moment. Unlike the health center, illness does not operate within certain time periods. If a medical issue arises, students need to know that there is a resource that they can reach out to that will support them in finding the appropriate medical attention. No matter how serious the issue, this support should be guaranteed. Students cannot afford to get into a cab where their driver may not be reliable when they are sick.
There is a clear solution to this problem: having a nurse on call who can speak to students to determine whether an emergency room visit is warranted. This is the case at Hampton University in Virginia. Their website states that they have an on-call clinical staff member 24/7 to address student concerns. An on-call staff member can see that students receive necessary advice or transportation to the emergency room safely would be beneficial.
Knowing that the health center is closed after a certain time, many students may seek out the Department of Public Safety when they are not feeling well. All Public Safety officers are certified EMTs and can evaluate and transport students to the health center, but they will not transfer students off-campus. Evaluation and transportation, while helpful, does not give students the complete help that they need. Medical advice or a prescription is still up to a medical professional.
Assessing a student’s minor health concerns should not fall under DPS’s jurisdiction. Also, what freshman would call DPS when experiencing a UTI? None that we know. Having someone with medical expertise on-call 24/7 would be invaluable to students.
Why should students be forced to wait until the morning to take care of pain or discomfort? How can you possibly be expected to do well in your classes and live up to everyone’s expectations if you are lacking sleep and feeling like death warmed over? A 9:30 a.m. exam?
In a perfect world, a student experiencing pain or discomfort would be able to call an on-call nurse and receive whatever medication or advice deemed necessary. A UTI would be solved with a single pill, a full-blown ear infection would receive the proper antibiotics and a possible case of appendicitis would be rushed to St. Vincent’s Hospital. No more braving a daunting taxi ride to the hospital or waiting until 8 a.m. for the health center to open.
Wouldn’t it be great if this wasn’t just a Fairfield student’s dream?
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