By Madelyn Pennino
Students at Millersville University won’t have access to around- the-clock health care for the fall semester and maybe longer.
Hours at the school health services center have been cut to run the center more efficiently, according to Aminta Breaux, MU’s vice president of student affairs.
Health center hours will be Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
In the spring, a task force made up of students, staff and community organizations reviewed the concept of health services, said Holly Freas-Webster, MU’s nursing supervisor.
Freas-Webster said the task force decided the health center could serve more people if it operated on a limited basis and by appointment only.
“It was mobbed every day. By moving the night nurse to the day, we will be able to serve students better and decrease the waiting time,” Freas-Webster said. “I think it will be more efficient for students.”
Health Services is in Witmer Infirmary on McCollough Street.
The university also is searching for a medical director to replace longtime medical director Dr. James Heffern, who died in April.
Breaux said reducing hours wasn’t an easy decision.
“Our goal is to provide a high standard of care. The loss of our medical director and staffing issues that limit overnight coverage to one nurse made it necessary to make changes.”
The health center employs five registered nurses, one nurse practitioner and a part-time doctor. There will be no layoffs as a result of the new hours.
About 12,000 students visited the health center last year, Freas- Webster said.
On a weekly basis, Freas-Webster said, 70 to 75 students visit the health center on average, except during the height of flu season.
When the clinic was open 24 hours a day, Freas-Webster said, nights would pass when no students visited it.
“I think there are some advantages to having 24-hour care,” Shannon Farrelly, the university’s student senate president, said. “But most of the time when someone needs care late at night, they need to go to the emergency room anyway.”
Freas-Webster said the new hours reflect realities beyond the campus. “It’s how the real world operates,” she said. “We’re an educational institution, so it seems right.”
Freas-Webster also said keeping a nurse overnight created security issues.
“We were concerned for the safety of staff and of the students,” Freas-Webster said. “In the middle of the night a student might have a medical issue a nurse may not be able to treat,” Freas-Webster said. “There also were some other things that were not appropriate.”
For example, Breaux said, students who visited the health center with high blood-alcohol-content levels.
“We just don’t have the necessary equipment to deal with that situation,” Breaux said. Usually these students are transported to Lancaster General Hospital.
The new hours have been in place for a week.
“We’re in a trial phase,” Freas-Webster said. “We’ll see what happens.”
So far, Farrelly said, students have expressed mixed feelings about the hours changing.
“For freshmen, it’s not anything different because they don’t know anything else,” Farrelly said. “Some students haven’t said too much. Others are upset, and with good reason, because they are paying for the services.”
A full-time undergraduate student pays a fee of $94.50 a semester for health services.
Farrelly said student focus groups are being organized to evaluate whether the health center should resume 24-hour-a-day operations.
Breaux said she also hopes to hear from hospital officials and police to see how the new hours are affecting their operations.
“It’s a wait-and-see situation,” Breaux said.
(c) 2008 Intelligencer Journal. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.
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