Students should have quick, easy access to medical care at the university. However, understaffing and under-budgeting at the University Medical Clinic is leaving sick students waiting for a relief.
The clinic treated 7,200 patients last year, including patients who visited more than once. Of those visits, 3,872 patients visited with the doctor or a nurse practioner. Most of those students waited at least two days for their appointments, sometimes longer during the busiest months of the year, which is unacceptable.
University enrollment has increased in the past three years, with the past two years having two of the largest entering freshman classes in history, and the Medical Clinic must increase its hours of care to accommodate the growing number of students. However, the university has not allocated enough funds in the Medical Clinic’s budget to hire more staff to see students more quickly, said Dr. Tony Rector, director of Clinical Services and the only full-time healthcare worker who can write prescriptions.
Although the clinic’s ratio of staff members to students ranks about average with universities in the region, according to the Sunbelt Surveys taken by Louisiana State University, it does not adequately meet the needs of students.
The office employs two licensed nurse practioners who can write prescriptions. But combined they average only 24 hours a week. Their hours combined with Rector’s, total 60 hours. In those 60 hours, they must treat up to 120 students each week. During the clinic’s busiest times, up to 50 patients visit every day, including those who see the two registered nurses, who cannot write prescriptions. The number of patients shows the need for the clinic on campus and the need for qualified healthcare workers.
Sick students need immediate access to a doctor to keep illness from spreading, especially on a college campus where lack of sleep, stress and unhealthy eating habits weakens students’ immune systems.
However, Rector said the discretionary budget for the clinic has remained flat, leaving him without funds to hire more workers. Rector said he would like to be able to increase the LNPs’ hours to total 80 hours a week and hire permanent up-front staffing to perform receptionist duties. As the office operates now, student-workers perform many office duties along with medical secretary Pam Medulla, whose responsibilities also include ordering supplies, keeping track of files and charging students’ accounts.
But, as a result of the low pay and fast-paced, stressful nature of the job, the turnover rate for student-workers is high, with many staying less than a year, which leaves office efficiency lacking, Rector said.
The university should allocate more money to the Medical Clinic so it can make needed changes. The Medical Clinic needs to run as efficiently as possible to serve students, faculty and staff, many of whom depend on the clinic as their sole source of medical care, Rector said.
Although the staff to student ratio for the clinic is average, which might be good enough for some universities, ACU is “no ordinary university,” and it requires students to strive for excellence, which they cannot achieve if they are ill.
If the university expects excellence from its students, it needs to provide them with excellent medical care-not merely average.
