Last year Student Health Services expanded its physical space. This year it should expand its staff. Though Wash. U. has attempted to improve its Student Health Services through upgrading its facilities, Health Services still falls short of adequately fulfilling student needs. Specifically, it is virtually impossible for students who wake up feeling ill to make same-day appointments.
Due to student willingness to use Student Health Services for regular, less urgent medical care, students who find themselves victims of viruses or other sudden sickness, but not in a state of emergency, find themselves locked out of appointments. Wash. U.’s success in providing students traditional medical examinations should translate into success in providing immediate relief or at least diagnosis for sick students, which is arguably the most important type of health care to have accessible on campus.
Students have a right to demand easily accessible health services because Wash. U. has mandated students pay a significant sum of $660.00 for health maintenance. This money, used partially to maintain a health services facility, should ensure students at least have the bare minimum sick day care that one could reasonably expect from an outside clinic.
The fact of the matter is that while a significant proportion of students use health services for its psychological counseling and other routine health care checks, the only benefit most students ever expect to see from Health Services is the insurance that if they’re sick they’ll be able to get to someone on campus who can analyze their symptoms. That expectation is currently not being met.
The problem does not seem to be one of efficiency, as Student Health Services’ online appointment scheduling and informative website make it easy for students to determine who they need to see for what problem and what type of appointment they should schedule. Setting aside a larger number of spaces for same day appointments does not seem to do enough because time slots for other medical care services like seeing the nutritionist or getting immunizations are already limited. Further limitation would allow even fewer appointment options to students already pressed by scheduling demands, potentially making it impossible for a significant number of students to use those services.
Instead, Student Health Services simply needs to hire more doctors. According to the Feb. 8, 2006 edition of Student Life, moving Student Health Services from Umrath Hall to Dardick House added 1,600 square feet of space. Though Health Services has used the extra room to perform small operations like giving students stitches, it should also devote some of this space to setting up areas where students can walk in and receive medical care.
For a university with one of the best medical schools in the country, finding and hiring a few more doctors to look at ear infections should be no large difficulty and taking this action would provide a needed improvement to campus health care. There is no reason why sick students, who have essentially paid for the service, should not have easy access to doctors.