<p>Agree with all above posters. I cannot imagine any RA that I have ever met in either of my d’s dorms being responsible for a sick student. Most of the RA’s were missing in action after move-in day. College health centers at least those in my experience do not have infirmaries any longer. Luckily neither of my d’s were ever sick enough to have to go to the ER but health center visits when they were not feeling well did take place. I suppose if either of mine had been super-sick I might have done the hotel recuperation deal-two of my friends had to do this, one of younger d’s friends had emergency appendectomy and her mom flew down to her school from NY that night and they spent the weekend recovering in a hotel. Family friend’s d was quite ill her first semester senior year and in hospital on IV for about 10 days or so and was pretty sick the rest of the semester. Friend drove back and forth from Long Island to Boston almost every week and spent lots of time with her in hotels. At least the patient was able to get a better parking spot on campus so she would not have to walk so far in her weakened state. She did have to move from off-campus housing to grad student suite housing to be in a “more sterile” environment and housing did step up to accomodate her needs.</p>
<p>OP, sorry about your D, hope she is better. That said, I, too, feel you are off base on your RA expectations.</p>
<p>Slightly off topic, but when visiting colleges, I feel all should investigate the health care scene with their kids. Where is the Health Center? What are the hours? If not 24 hours, what and where are options if not an emergency requiring an ambulance?</p>
<p>Our D spent a few nights in her private U’s 24 hour HC, almost hospitalized. I was a wreck, 2000 miles away, but the full time nursing staff kept me informed, as well as her Dorm rector. Her admittance to the HC also triggered an email to all of her professors which did alleviate some of her concerns.</p>
<p>The public U our S attends has strictly a 9 to 5, Monday thru Friday Health Center. Experience told us he would need to know where to go after hours. Surprisingly, the Urgent care 1/2 mile from campus closes at 10p.m.! (Yea, right, like nothing happens to college kids after 10!) Turns out the next option is in the next town–15 minutes away by car. Not surprising to us, S has visited both places…</p>
<p>Ugg, yes, I did pneumonia, 2 trips to ER and a broken ankle complete with surgery over the four years with S1 all via phone all from 1800 miles away. I got the “worst” with the “first” and it’s been pretty easy with #2. One ER trip the ER nurse dropped him back to his apartment after her shift because he couldn’t track down any roommates that night to come and get him. Thank heavens for small rural towns. It’s hard not to purchase a plane ticket and go ‘be with them’ when they are going through “stuff.” Healthcare is something I think more about when the kids are shopping colleges. Make sure your health insurance is portable also.</p>
<p>Our kids at college are adults…
any “checking” in by an RA is a courtesy.</p>
<p>Our kids have the repsonsibility to get to the health clinic and to get the meds and take them.</p>
<p>RAs are not mommy.</p>
<p>Years ago, when I had to go to the health clinic which was “closed” during Sundays–my sorority sister called her folks (living nearby–who got their family doc to the office for me) I was very ill and the bronchitis was making the asthma unbearable.
My second run-in with the health care on campus was with an allergic reaction (eye) during an exercise class…and my car was parked in a spot that had to be cleared for the upcoming football game…an security guard had to drive me to my car to move it…after treatment.
I won’t even tell you how bad the care was for a migraine…</p>
<p>It is part of the problem of health care at universities,
and the practicalities of being an single adult in a town or city …Not near family.
It will be the same way when our kids are in out of college and living elsewhere.</p>
<p>OP, I hope your student feels better quickly.</p>
<p>Wow! This is reminding me how my D got her roomie to the ER and stayed all night while she had an emergency appendectomy. I’m not gonna’ lie ( been DYING to say that!) ; I was a little irritated with my D who ended up missing classes that she could not afford to miss. But she was not having it any other way. They never mentioned an RA nor an infirmary.</p>
<p>With all due respect, strep is extremely common in college. (If it was really bad, the health center would have checked her into the local hospital.) And strep goes away rather quickly with antibiotics; one usually feels a whole lot better in ~24 hours. While it would have been nice for the RA to stop in, that goes above and beyond…IMO.</p>
<p>OP, I hope all is well now. I can understand the misperception about an RA’s duties, if you have had a different experience when you were in college, or were never in a dorm.</p>
<p>The RAs are really there to make sure the place doesn’t burn down, but beyond that, not sure what else they do! I frankly don’t even remember the RA I had in the dorms, but I do remember the one my boyfriend had in the neighboring dorm. He was pretty useless, even joined us once for a big party in a dorm room!</p>
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<p>This is true, I had it 3 times my freshman year. Went to the health center, got antibiotics. That’s about all I remember of it.</p>
<p>My D has a chronic health condition that can be life-threatening so I had a lengthy conversation with her school’s health center before freshman year. I’m only 3 hours away but she can become non-ambulatory and almost incoherent within that time and I wanted her and her roommates to know exactly what to do and who to call if that happened. </p>
<p>It turns out that campus security is responsible for making sure that seriously ill students get help…makes sense, but who knew? Aside from being on duty 24/7, apparently they can and will check on students who may be in trouble, administer emergency aid, call and escort ambulances (good thing as their dorm complex is a maze), and notify the emergency contact person. Luckily, they haven’t been needed but we felt much better knowing that everyone is prepared to deal with the situation if it arises.</p>
<p>Strep is contagious until a person has been on meds for at least 36 hours. I am the mother of an RA and of a child with PANDAS. I would not want my child near someone with strep.</p>
<p>I am confused as to why OP emailed the RA instead of calling, texting or emailing her own daughter to see how she felt. If the daughter felt too poorly to call the RA herself to seek help, then OP should have contacted the RA or campus security.</p>
<p>At my D’s school. a boy she knew from HS got very sick his first year. He stayed in his dorm room because he wasn’t contagious and the health center sent a nurse over to check on him, daily at first and then less often as he got better. The health center arranged for meals to be delivered to him by campus security. The RA’s were not involved because they are not medical personnel. By the way, this was at a state school.</p>
<p>Aspirationally, I would hope that my D, the RA, would at least text a sick student. Knocking on the door could wake up a student who is struggling to sleep, as could calling. Of course, if the RA doesn’t see or hear from this student overnight, they should knock on the door and go to the RD or security to gain entrance if there is no answer.</p>
<p>Hope OP’s little girl is feeling better by now.</p>
<p>Just want to emphasize what someone wrote earlier:</p>
<p>In most colleges and universities, there is NO such thing as an infirmary, student health is open only during business hours on weekdays, and no doctors are on call–and the after hours emergency number is staffed by a nurse who will typically tell students to go to the ER if they feel that they cannot wait until student health reopens. The nurse is not likely to try to diagnose something over the phone due to liability issues.</p>
<p>On most campuses, if the student were to tell the after hours nurse that they have no transportation to the local hospital (the usual case in a freshman dorm), the student will be told to call 911. Thus, a kid with a viral infection with a 102 temp on a Friday night ends up being totally unecessarily transported to the ER (and getting hit with a huge bill) because he feels way too lousy to wait until Monday and has no idea how to get to an urgent care center. </p>
<p>Student health services, like the rest of the health care system, is a bit dysfunctional.
I have warned my own kids that if they feel ill on Thursday or early in the day Friday that they should go to Student health then. Calling them on Friday afternoon is worthless; they are generally booked up and tell the kids they have to wait until Monday to be seen.</p>
<p>OP - Did you ever live in a dorm while you were in college? It seems odd that you would have those kind of expectations for an RA.</p>
<p>The RA at my son’s college does not take care of sick students. But they have a team of volunteering students to help the sick students. They are trained to give CPR, give first aid, over-the-counter medicine, call ambulance,…</p>
<p>In the OP’s case, I think it’s best to ask neighbors for help.</p>
<p>Sandiego,
Not sure if you’re still reading through this thrashing you’re getting, but I think you have a right to be disappointed that the RA took the time to e-mail her supervisor but couldn’t bother to send you a message explaining her scope of responsibilities. Forwarding the message to the supervisor was clearly a “cover my butt/pass the buck” action. And you are wise not to place much confidence in the diagnoses of campus health clinics. My nephew was told for over a week (by campus health personnel) that he had a viral ear infection, when in fact he had a type of cerebral hemorrhage. Finally his room mate took him to the ER and he underwent emergency surgery & thankfully made a full recovery.</p>
<p>In defense of you, OP, I think the piling-on is really unnecessary. I don’t think your initial idea to get in touch with the RA was unreasonable, even if you and I both now have a better idea of the RA’s job description. I’ve always thought of the RA as my first contact. My D is not fully prepared for all aspects of the grown-up world, and doesn’t have as much experience, judgment, and common sense as I would have if I were there to help her. It’s reassuring to me to know that there’s someone on-site, trained to assess situations, to know about resources that my D may not, and to advise her. I don’t think it’s outlandish to think of contacting such a person when your child is sick.</p>
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<p>Good to know, sk8rmom!</p>
<p>I truly didn’t mean to pile on the OP (although personally I wouldn’t expect an RA to be responsible for this, clearly I just view RA’s differently). I did want to point out that in our experience there is very little on campus support for a very sick student, that student health centers tend to open 9-5 and infirmaries a thing of the past, and I think this is the case at many colleges. It was surprising to us when faced with this situation, and we had to scramble to deal with it.</p>
<p>D had strep. I didn’t have RA’s contact info, but when she wasn’t getting better after 24 hours on penicillin, I called the health office (on a Sunday) and had them page the physician on call. He called me back; I described her symptoms; he called her (on a Sunday) to determine as best he could, over the phone, if it was just strep or maybe mono. It was strep and she started feeling better.</p>
<p>She is a plane ride away. It was very worrisome to think that my child is all alone, sick, with no one to care for her (except her own sick self). She had to walk down to CVS to get her prescription when she had 102 fever and chills. Not fun. What if she went to school in a cold climate where it was freezing and snowing?</p>
<p>A friend of mine who’s a nurse said when she dropped her son off at college, she eyeballed the nurse at the health center and had a little chat about filling a prescription for him if he had strep. I’m not sure exactly what she said/did, but she gave me the impression she had figured out a work around to “I’m sick but I have to go to CVS to drop off/pick up my prescription.” There’s got to be a better way.</p>
<p>OP,
Your D. needed to contact any of her friends to take her to emergency in case she cannot drink becasue of her throat condition. It is very dangerous. My D. just went thru the same, but she was never diagnosed, they kept taking tests, her throat looked simply horrendous and it started closing. She also had hard time moving, let alone driving. They had to put 3 bags of liquids in her in ER. Her throat was so bad that it was hurting to breathe while her nose was completely plugged up. Then she got much worse by taking antibiotics, her stomach reacted very badly to it and it was another trip to ER and 2 more bags of liquids. Well, I ended up going there and taking care of her. RA’s or anybody else are not family, they are not friends, they will not take care of sick.</p>
<p>Sick students at college are in a brutally difficult situation. They are living on their own, in a place where the food is in another building, often with no access to a car, no one who is obligated to help out (roommates may help, but it is not their job), and limited money.</p>
<p>Most of us would find it difficult to cope with the challenge of being ill under such circumstances. Can you imagine feeling ill but having to walk to the dining hall to get something to eat? Or to the pharmacy to fill a prescription? </p>
<p>I wouldn’t criticize the student who ends up taking possibly unnecessary taxis to a possibly unnecessary visit to the ER. Sometimes, there are few alternatives.</p>
<p>…and it is much worse, when they live in studio apartment all by themselves in totally new place for them where they did not have a chance to make firends yet. Forget food, my D. was way too sick to eat, she could not swallow and her stomach would not even take sip of water.<br>
They have to know the telephone numbers to call. D. has called a doc. office that was closed, but there was a phone number of nurse on call. She talked to this person very many times during several days and it was helpful. When she eventually got to doc’s office, this nurse updated MD with D’s history which was also very helpful.</p>