Health Center Not Meeting Standards

No doctor would recommend walking a mile on a broken leg. But if you have the misfortune to injure yourself on campus, you'd have to walk pretty far to get treatment from the Student Health Center.

The Student Health Center sells itself as a convenient, cheap alternative to Allen Memorial Hospital, but students are dissatisfied with many of its aspects. Complaints range from the Health Center being too far away from campus and work hours not being honored, to appointments being chronically unavailable.

"I was really sick one morning. I could barely walk," said junior Kate Waimey. "I called the Health Center at 8 a.m., because that's when they say they're open, but they didn't have any appointments for four or five days. I was desperate. I was crying. The woman I talked to heard me crying. But she turned me away."

"99 percent of students get appointments within 24 hours," said Director of Student Health Laura Hieronymus, saying that Waimey's case was an isolated one. "But any month on our schedule will have 50 or 60 no-shows. In the real world, they would be charged $25. Since we don't charge, it makes it easy for these students to inconvenience other students."

"Somebody can call, and we look like we have a full schedule," said Health Education and Wellness Coordinator Lori Morgan Flood.

"I don't think we should blame the people who work at the Health Center," said Waimey. "I think everyone realizes that people are cancelling, but they should really have a system where people can walk in and wait. I was willing to wait there for two or three hours as long as I could avoid going to the hospital, which is in itself a traumatic experience."

Another problem students had was the lack of staff even during posted hours.

"There were clearly listed Spring Break hours during which no one was in fact there," said Junior Claire Miller. "My mom was with me that last weekend, trying to get me medical attention on a street that resembled the Twilight Zone: all these clinics in a row, but no aid available. After being turned away from the darkened Student Health building, we did find a living person after Locked Door Number Three of the Oberlin Clinic South Office, but they wouldn't even let us use the phone."

"Honoring one's stated business hours is always helpful," she added. "The staff at the Health Center has always been very kind to me; it's more the policy makers that I have any issue with."

"During break, we are very underutilized," said Hieronymus. "Because of this, the staff feel like they can leave the Center unattended. But we're taking measures to deal with that issue."

Students also took issue with the Health Center's distance from campus.

"The Student Health Center provides good services and needed services, but the only thing is that it's kind of insane to expect someone that's been suffering from the flu for three days to walk a mile and a half to the damn thing," said sophomore Daniel Blackburn.

"I would rather suffer in silence than have to walk a mile and a half to actually get to Student Health," concurred first-year Dean Rodgers.

"The fact that we are far from campus is probably the most common complaint we hear," said Hieronymus. "We have no control over the space we're in, but we'd love to be on campus."

"As of two years ago, Student Health is a block further from campus than it used to be," said Dean of Students Peter Goldsmith. "The move was necessitated by our discontinuing our dependence on the Oberlin Clinic to serve student needs (which, at the time, seemed not to be very well met.)"

"The old health service was in disarray," agreed Hieronymus. "You don't know just how bad it was. They had poor equipment, poor service. They were scattered, disorganized. The students were very dissatisfied, and worked with the College to create the new Health Center."

"Is it 'so far' from campus?" said Goldsmith. "I think that's a relative matters - it is closer to the center of campus than the student health center that I knew at my previous institution."

"There are a couple of scenarios that could result in our moving Student Health closer to campus again, in he next couple of years," said Goldsmith. "But there are some other issues that would be needed to be sorted out before anything like that happened. Meanwhile our Student Health Center is working very hard to serve students well. Students who are too sick to transport themselves to Student Health are always welcome to call Safety and Security for transportation."

"We really try to maintain an open door policy," said Hieronymus. "Input from students is highly valued."