Don't get sick at college
 

Today's Wall St Journal has an article about how a lot of schools are closing their infirmaries and contracting with doctors in the community to cut costs. Also they talk about how overbooked and understaffed the infirmaries are...pretty scary actually.

No more scary than Hudson Health Center was when I was a student.

There were so many quacks in that place that you thought you'd walked into a Daffy Duck cartoon.

I'm actually pretty happy with my campus healthcare system. Maybe if I went to a big state school, I'd have more cause for complaints. My school is so tiny, that you can go in at most times and be seen within minutes. The only real complaint I hear from students regarding our Health Services is that whenever one comes in for many ailments, it's assumed that it's either an STI or pregnancy. One of my friends claims that the nurse basically told her that she was in denial about being pregnant (she came in with backaches). Gah!

My health center is awful. I have so many awful stories about friends of mine being misdiagnosed. A friend of mine had a cyst of some kind inside of his throat. The doctors told him that it was strepth (even though you could see this thing...it was huge!) The thing kept getting bigger although he was on antibiotics. Got to the point where his throat started to close up. By the time he got to the ER (he was having trouble breathing), the thing had popped and created a nasty mess all over the ER.
I've gone in for colds and flus and was prescribed the Z-pack. These are antibiotics. They're trying to cure a viral infection with antibiotics!!!! This is one of the reasons why bacteria is becoming resistent because people are taking antibiotics for viral infections.

Our student health services department is pretty great in my opinion.

My college hired community physicians to serve the campus. Actually, it worked out better because before there was only one doctor on staff, and he could only see you between 7:30 AM to 9 AM. We're a small campus, but still! Plus, it was way too difficult to get out of bed at 7:30 AM when you are sick!

Here is a typical scenario with our campus nurse -

"Nurse, nurse! My leg has been chopped off!"

"We'll fix you right up! Here is some salt!" :p

and it's not as scary as our health building. You go in with an ear infection and they try to tell you it's gonhorrea.:rolleyes:

Our med center was pretty pathetic. Their favorite diagnosis was pregnancy. No matter what was wrong with you, you were pregnant. Even if you were male. :rolleyes:

DeltAlum- did they give you the choice between the red pills and the white pills? Seriously it's probably ever worse. they didn't bother to read the allergy charts of one of my sisters and almost killed her. i'd rather go to an independent doctor in Athens County.

Fronske Health Center, at Northern Arizona University, is ok...I mean they do seem to like to be convinced you are pregnant (even after you just said you are menstrating...sigh)...but other then that they are pretty quick and not too bad...My current big problem is that they are $20 per visit unless you have the school's health insurance...Then you add that I have an out of state insurance company so I really cant go to a doctor off campus without being charged more...I liked my copay in california of $10...

The school I transferred from had a terrible campus health center! Their answer to everything was to go to walmart and buy equate medicine.

I'm not too sure about the campus health place here .. I haven't been there yet...

Yup. In those days, if we could still walk, we'd drive to Columbus for help.

The health center at Cal State Long Beach is pretty good! They had doctors available all day and have an onsite lab, pharmacy and even a room where they can do EKGs and stuff. They also had a dietician, gynacologist and, I think, a psychiatrist.

The students don't have to pay for their consultation and the over the counter meds were discounted.

I mentioned to one of the doctors that I was (at the time) covered by my dad's Kaiser Permanente plan. She told me that she herself was a Kaiser doctor who did rotations at our uni. So, in effect, these are "real" doctors and not some cut-rate slackers.

The nursing staff was really cool.....and, in all of my many visits over my 6 years as a student, I was never accused of being pregnant. :)

Thumbs up to the CSULB health center!

....Kelly :)

Oh my goodness....our health center at Mizzou is AWFUL!!! I could go in there dying of something or with my arm chopped off and they would still probably give me Powerade. Powerade is the answer to every problem apparently! That and extra strength Sudafed....doesn't matter whether you're pregnant or you have the Ebola virus, according to them red Powerade and Sudafed will cure EVERYTHING. :rolleyes:

My friend went in there b/c she had some weird bump on her back, it was so gross, and they told her that it was nothing abnormal. Just a natural bump in her spine, whatever the hell THAT is?! :confused: She went to the real hospital later on and found out that it was a cyst and she then got it removed. :rolleyes:

The health center here can be good for certain things. In the counseling dept, top notch. Their women's health is pretty good too. Never a complaint. Their general clinic and lab? Ha...that's why we call it the "death center". I went having serious problems w/ my lower GI tract and even after medicines, 2 stool samples (I've never had a worse moment), and lab work out the yang, they still had no answer. It took another doctor to figure out I had IBS. And they prescribe antibiotics like nothing else. The only good thing I can say is that when I had food poisoning they took pretty good care of me.

Oh my lord I had forgotten how horrible our healthcare on campus was!!!

There was one MD- an OB-GYN, and no matter what if you were a girl he said you were pregnant or had a VD and all the guys just had VDs.
No kidding- I went in one day, sore throat, fever, chills, it was around November (AKA Flu season!) and just general miserable feeling. He takes my temp, tells me I'm either pregnant or have the clap, but seeing as how #1 I hadn't had sex in months, and #2 just had my annual and checked out OK, he then did blood work. I had the flu, it turned out and he had to LOOK IN A BOOK to tell me what to take! AARRGHH!

ANother friend of mine went with a sore knee, he told her she was pregnant... this guy was all over the pregnancy testing!

My junior year they privatized and then the company they sold it to went under so they had none for a few weeks and then reopened it the next year in debt. They are now suing the company that they let privatize. The costs were outrageous for everything and they didn't carry half the prescriptions that they had before so you had to go off campus for meds.

I am so glad to have good insurance!!! And good doctors!!!

Our student clinic is pretty big and it's free, but that's about the only good thing about it. I quit going to the MDs there after freshman year, because whenever I would come in, they would tell me either that a) nothing was wrong, or b) that I was anorexic or bulemic. :rolleyes: Oooookay. The last straw, though, was when the OBGYN told me that I all but had cancer and I needed to go in for a biopsy, and that I should start taking 600 milligrams of Advil the day before because it was going to be painful. Well, to make a long story short, I went to a "real" doctor and found out that everything is all right. But this really takes the cake--as I was looking through the medical records the university had kept on me, I found soooooo many things that weren't right...about the only thing that was accurate was my name and age! I couldn't believe it. I will never trust those eejits in the university health service *ever* again. If they can't even get my records right, what does that say about them? Not much.

I think it must be a requirement for University Health Centers to be terrible. Two quick stories from me...my junior year I got a spider bite on my toe and needed antibiotics b/c I was having a severe allergic reaction. Well the doctor tries to tell me I have gout (a type of arthritis----most common to elderly men) and how sad it is for such a young person to have this, and how hopefully I'll be able to walk normally, etc (I was limping badly b/c my foot was SWOLLEN and I couldn't put pressure on it) Thing is you could even see where the spider bit me!!! So she decides to run tests to "confirm" the gout (big surprise when that came out negative) and finally gave me antibiotics "just in case it was a spider bite"

Then my senior year....I rolled over on my foot one night and ended up breaking it (my foot looked like you put a softball on the top of it). Well I needed xrays...and the doctor couldn't tell if it was broken or not by looking at the films...and he wouldn't let me see my own films...so they had to "send them out" to be looked at and they said they would call me. Well they never called so I called back....so I called them and they were like "Oh yeah, it's broken, you have a stress fracture---have you been wrapping it?"

I don't know why I ever went back after the first incident....but I guess if nothing else it was convenient :p

I wonder why that is, that the docs at campus health centers always want to diagnose you as pregnant. My college was the same way. It's like they get a commission for every pregnant girl they see.

Even better, is that when I WAS pregnant, and had a miscarriage, they told me there was no way I could be pregnant. :mad:

I guess my campus is different. But I think that's because although many people know where the building is, not many know that they're just like a regular clinic that you can go to if you're not feeling well. BUt, the service is great.

Whoa, those are some crazy stories. Luckily I go to a school with one of the best medical schools in the country, and our health center is affiliated with them, so I haven't really had a problem with being incorrectly treated. But there is a problem with the billing, I had to visit the emergency room after I fell and cut myself on a random sharp object(no, I wasn't drunk...apparently it's bad to dance with socks on a hardwood floor...). Anyways, my insurance paid them months ago, yet I keep recieving bills from them. I call, tell them I paid, they check it out, say ok we go it, and sure enough, another bill arrives. So annoying!

Well. Um....

When i was a Freshman, I was diagnosed with a sinus infection. Turns out, it was pneumonia.

I'd trust Clarion Area more than Kill-me Health Center, and I don't really trust Clarion Area. If I was sick I'd go atleast as far as Butler to get treatment