The Health and Wellness Center is operating with low staff numbers and they rely on those staff members to work longer hours. The reason for low staff can be found in the lack of funds to hire additional nurse practitioners, registered nurses and administrative assistants.
Currently, the Center is staffed with two full-time registered nurses, one part-time registered nurse, one administrative assistant, one nurse practitioner and one physician assistant. Although they are short-staffed, the Center attempts to reach a goal of seeing 30-60 students a day.
Marcy Cole, the assistant director of the Student Health and Wellness Center, has been working with the Center for four and a half years. She says the Center always attempts to educate on self-care, encourages students to try to self-diagnose and determine whether or not they actually need to see someone at the Center themselves.
The Center currently offers services for illnesses such as sore throats, colds, UTI’s, allergies and coughs. However, they are unable to offer services for long-term illnesses such as blood pressure and diabetes, any surgical issues or testing for issues like migraines. The Center also does not have the required equipment to provide certain services such as X-rays and ultrasounds.
“We do see a lot of injuries, and occasionally, things will be broken, and if we’re not sure, we would send them to the hospital for X-rays. If the report comes back that it’s broken, then we’ll get them into the orthopedic office,” says Cole.
The Health and Wellness Center sees many injuries such as sprained ankles. The Center is unable to offer X-ray services because “it’s very expensive,” Cole continues, “For the hours we’re open and for the injuries we see, I don’t think it would be beneficial. I think we could maybe put the money towards other things that would be more efficient with it.”
Cole says that with more money the Center would be able to hire more health care providers, but for now, it simply isn’t in the funds. This causes the Center to put a limit to the number of students they are able to see every day.
To control the flow of students, the center always requires an appointment for anything other than TB testing and flu shots. Appointments are never made more than three days in advance and the Center attempts to see a student either on the day of the request, or the day after.
However, Vanessa Parada, a junior, was unable to schedule an appointment for several days at the Center. “I had a really sore throat and cough and was trying for over two days to get an appointment. Every time I called, the front desk would tell me different things like ‘we are full,’ ‘must call in the morning when we open to make an appointment,’ ‘sorry, we don’t make same-day appointments, you must call ahead’...Finally, Iwassofedupandinpain,I went there and asked to speak to someone in charge...” said Parada.
Student Health Partners is a student advisory board organization that was created to voice their health concerns and what they want or need from the Center. However, the group has become inactive as of this semester because of a lack of interested students. Only two students of the required four were interested. The Center encourages students to join the group and make it active again.
Cole says that she believes the Center is at a good place right now, but that they could use another health care provider to increase the number of students able to be seen every day.
If you are interested in joining Student Health Partners, visit longwoodorgs.collegiatelink.net.
