<p>Packmom, I agree that handling these kinds of things are steps toward independence.</p>
<p>Wow, 9:30-11:30 is such a short window to get medical attention. I think that is terrible, especially for a moderate sized university.</p>
<p>At the school son attends, I called the health care center yesterday. A recording came on telling the student to call 911 if this is an emergency and another number was given if it were a mental health emergency. Then it stated hours that they are open. That was it, so aparently no medical advice is available through them when they are closed. Frankly, medical advice over the phone would not have done anything for my son. He required some medication.</p>
<p>Funny, I had completely the opposite experience this weekend. My son was injured in a club sports competition. He was – very appropriately – taken to the emergency room three blocks away from the gym where he was. Within 20 minutes a dean showed up, and remained there with him for 6+ hours. Apparently, university policy is that if a student requires emergency medical care, some assistant dean is on call 24-7 to be present. The deans rotate; each one takes a week of call every other month or so. This one helped my son contact his teachers to get extensions on some deadlines that were coming up in the next 24-72 hours.</p>
<p>It was a little bit of overkill. My son was not THAT badly injured; he was stable, conscious, and in contact with us by cell phone, and he had a coach or friend(s) with him the whole time. The emergency room was in the university’s own hospital. Still, I get a pretty warm, fuzzy feeling from this. Score one for expensive, private, mid-sized universities, I guess. We were worried about him, but not about his access to quality medical care and administrative attention.</p>
<p>All parents and kids (although most think they are invincible ;)) should definitely check out the health care available on campus and off campus. Campus security at most colleges will not transport a sick student off campus. This is pretty standard SOP. </p>
<p>My daughter is at a very large state university (20,000 students) and the health center is not open on the weekends. There are several urgent care centers nearby as well as a hospital two miles away. Many hospital ER’s also have a urgent care section for those with minor illnesses and injuries. When she had a severe allergic reaction (not life threatening) my daughter was able to get her roommate drive her to the urgent care. They even took our insurance and I am two states away. I think her student health care center is very accessible, offers a number of services (including well woman care) and even has some evening hours - all at no out of pocket cost to the students. </p>
<p>My youngest is at a smaller university and her health care center has more limited hours - staffed by a nurse practitioner but a physician is on call and available for appointments. She rotates around three colleges and specializes in adolescent medicine. My daughter has seen her and she is terrific. In fact, I would prefer that she see her rather than coming home to see her pediatrician.
Last year she got a nasty stomach bug and got dehydrated. Even though her roommate was taking care of her she dried out pretty quick and they both realized late in the evening she needed an IV. Instead of calling campus security, she didn’t want an ambulance - they took matters into their own hands and went off to the ER at about 11 pm. Her awesome roomie stayed with her the whole time until she got the IV and was sent home at 7am and the health center nurses followed up with her after.</p>
<p>Most student health centers - at least at my kids’ schools - do not take insurance. They either offer the service ‘free’ or charge a small out of pocket fee - $10-15. </p>
<p>Along this vein I would also suggest that you inquire about counseling services available as well. My youngest was hit hard this semester - heavy schedule, personal problems, family issues etc… After calling me and whining I finally put my foot down - I told her to call the counseling center and make an appointment. After a week she did and now she has a standing weekly appointment with a counselor at her school at no cost. Best. thing. ever.</p>
<p>I did not realize this, only because campus security did take my friend’s D to the ER at the mother’s request when she called them early in the evening on a Friday. LOL, if I called campus security for my son, I would NEVER stop hearing about it. Then again, my friend’s D was sick enough that she wanted her mother to make the call.</p>
<p>JHS, glad that your son got the attention that he needed and that you were happy with the care provided. I hope that your son is feeling better. I think that your situation is a bit different (injuy on campus where many people were aware of it vs. mild illness), so I could not compare. My son attends a private U. and I am very happy so far, other than this, with the administrative attention.</p>
<p>i am pretty sure my kids wouldn’t even call me if they were a bit under the weather. they would probably wait until the health center opened, find a ride to convenient care or go to an emergency room if they were that sick.</p>
<p>I’m glad your son is ok, but boy, that does seem like overkill to have an assistant dean have to babysit every kid who gets injured. A representative from the school should be enough, no?</p>
<p>I had never thought to look up the student health center hours before since every time my daughter has needed their services, she has been able to get right in. They are open 8am-8pm weekdays and 8am-5pm on weekends. I’m glad to know they offer weekend services. </p>
<p>Good advice to check for urgent care clinics near campus, though.</p>
<p>I was surprised to learn that neither of my two kids’ colleges had health clinic hours on the weekend–at all.</p>
<p>Of course, over the weekends was precisely when they both got sick over the years. I should have done more to help scout out where to go in advance, due to everything posters have mentioned–location and transportation(no cars for freshmen), insurance, hours, etc.</p>
<p>I didn’t realize it had to do with liability issues (the Williams example). Nonetheless, it boggles my mind that on campuses of this size (greater than 12k students), there was no health center available to them on the weekends.</p>
<p>One more thing not mentioned … if your kids get sick on the weekends or night and they don’t know where to go they should notify their RA or RD if they live in the dorms. This is one job of the RD, to assist your kids when they need help.</p>
<p>JustAMom, absolutely and this is where we went wrong. I had my kiddo going to the campus police over the weekend because I recalled that my friend called them for her freshman DD. That was a mistake. I should have had my kiddo go the RA. Frankly, he did fine on his own. I just did not like the idea of my kid being left to figure this out on his own, without knowing who to contact. What bothers me more is the idea of students getting ill on Fridays and then spreading the germs by using the dining halls, and using the common bathrooms without being diagnosed until Mondays, but it is what it is I guess.</p>
<p>There are limits to how much an RA can do, depending on campus policy. I know at USC I wasn’t allowed to transport sick/injured students to the hospital. For that we had to contact campus security, who would either call an ambulance or drive them to the ER themselves. There were too many liability problems there. The only thing that RAs were allowed to transport were rape victims, if the person requested it (for privacy reasons- campus police/medics were required to report, RAs were not). </p>
<p>We had an outbreak of norovirus on campus, and our health clinic had weekend, but not night hours. It started on a Friday night. Over 30 students were transported by campus police to the ER in about 2 hours (it got even crazier after that!). The school handled it pretty well, but it was a crazy few days, especially because it started on a weekend. At least it got our campus all trained up before swine flu season! </p>
<p>Moral of the story- always at least ask an RA. Even if they can’t personally do something, they have been trained to know who can. If they can’t drive, they probably still know everyone on the floor with cars, and can find a student who will, if the ill student doesn’t want to get campus security involved.</p>