<p>I am actually discussing this with my fellow workers here at the hospital where I’m working tonight. An ER doctor and three other nurses as well as one of the local police officers who comes by and checks on us. We all agree we have never heard of any competent adult forced to be treated at an ER and not allowed to leave. Even when they are mugged. If you had your wits about you, you could have refused to go to ER. If you were genuinely forced against your will you should have sued, because you would have won a lot of money.</p>
<p>@wilderzengirl: Eh, We also don’t know the hospital and we don’t know the relationship between the college and the hospital;. It’s not beyond the range of possibility that they could have an agreement with the college that they don’t discharge college students until after the weekend. I work for a hospital chain. We have plenty of people who don’t don’t get discharged on the day they are ready for discharge–especially on weekends for all kinds of reasons. I’m willing to take OP’s story at face value.</p>
<p>The OP is a long time poster. She has mentioned her D’s condition in other posts. Don’t believe that it is a psychiatric issue. </p>
<p>Well, I would love to know the name of this college; don’t know what the big secret it about not revealing it. It would actually be helpful information for other students/parents.</p>
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<p>could you please tell me the name of the hospital so I can go to an ER where people are working and not online? </p>
<p>thank you.</p>
<p>And again, there is no shame if it is a psychiatric issue. </p>
<p>Geez, go to work.</p>
<p>Sure, it’s Flaget Memorial. Don’t worry, no patients right now. It will get busy about midnight.</p>
<p>No. There’s not.</p>
<p>But, there is no way you are sitting at home on the computer, or at work, posting about this if this happens to your kid the way you are saying. The poster would have already been with their kid and really too busy to be discussing this at all on the internet. </p>
<p>OPs child has a chronic condition. We know this.</p>
<p>However, if the daughter had been on psych hold, letting her return to campus after a simple visit with NP is completely irresponsible.</p>
<p>Either way this is not right.</p>
<p>I agree if the hospital and university are forcing students to stay against their will over a weekend for no good reason that that is not good policy. I’m also shocked it happens and would love to know where this is happening.</p>
<p>It is happening at a larger facility than 52 beds. I wish I could get paid to be at work and surf the web and post on threads.</p>
<p>Major Metropolitan Area. US.</p>
<p>I’ve been following this thread and am saddened to see it going off the rails. Sincerely hope that doesn’t happen.</p>
<p>@poetgrl that is not specific. @GA2012MOM become a nurse and you can!</p>
<p>I cannot make this any more clear.
- The doctor who treated her told us on Saturday that while she was fully medically cleared for discharge, the college and the hospital had an agreement such that <em>any</em> students were “held” til Monday when student health services reopened at the college. Regardless of why they were there (concussion, broken bone, reaction to medication, appendectomy, etc). He was “monkey in the middle” and if I didn’t like the policy, take it up with the school or the hospital, not him.<br>
- The medical director of the school confirmed this policy in a conversation with my H on Saturday, and again today in a follow up conversation they had. As part of this discussion, this is where she also brought up that because this is college policy, the hospital either doesn’t bill or the college picks up the tab. It is an explicit agreement between the college and the hospital.<br>
- the Dean of Students confirmed this policy to me, and mentioned by way of example that a few weeks ago she had a student who had fallen and hit her head, suspected concussion, was sent to the ER and was medically cleared on Sat but remained til Monday.<br>
- she received no treatment or medication (other than saline / hep lock at the outset).
- he was indeed released on Monday back to school, had a brief intake interview at campus health services and went on her way. </p>
<p>I don’t know what more you want. We had access / permission from our daughter; indeed, she called my husband for his medical advice first when the situation occurred.</p>
<p>My H knows how to “speak their language” and navigate medical systems, as a physician himself. We know what we heard. </p>
<p>My intent was to discuss the policy, as I never heard of an agreement like this between a hospital and an outside entity. </p>
<p>This is such a baffling and silly policy to me. If the medical director had time to talk to your H on Saturday, then surely she would have had enough time to go to the hospital for 10 minutes and clear your daughter to go back to her dorm. A colossal waste of your D’s time and the hospital’s.</p>
<p>Do not believe our kids’ U had such a policy, but their health center was closed on weekends. Do NOT know what they would have done if our kids had needed services on a weekend–they would have probably had to get themselves to the med school campus and see what services they could get or go to the ER there.</p>
<p>It does seem like an odd policy and does seem unreasonable that your D could not be checked out except by spending and extra two nights at the hospital. This does seem wasteful of medical resources, even if it MIGHT be cost-effective for the U, if they have the agreement with the hospital that they said they have. One issue I am always concerned about in connection with hospitals is GETTING an infection there, which is another reason to try to minimize time there.</p>
<p>Somehow, it really seems the U should have a doc who can be on call to check out students who may be ready to be released from the hospital on Saturday or Sunday rather than making ALL students who may be hospitalized on Friday stay the entire weekend! Wonder what they do if the student happens to be hospitalized on the 1st day of a break–do they make the kid stay in the hospital until the student health center re-opens in a week or month? Very unreasonable</p>
<p>You had better ask for two days room and board pro rate since your daughter was not allowed access. </p>
<p>I can’t figure out how this is legal. </p>
<p>Pizzagirl, you might want to explore the history of the policy. I don’t know if it’s common or not, but it’s pretty obvious to me that it’s a liability concern, and if the policy is unique to this school, it could be a reaction to some unfortunate incident in the past – that is, some case X years ago when a kid was sent to emergency, discharged, and then came back to campus and developed some much worse, life-threatening condition… and then the university got sued. Or maybe there wasn’t particular history at that campus, but perhaps the student health center used to be staffed on weekends and that policy was a necessary condition to allow the college to close the center during those hours. (It could be required by their health insurer, their liability insurer, or some state regulation they are subject to.)</p>
<p>Think about it this way: it is fairly common for emergency rooms to discharge people who really are sick and should have more treatment. That Texas hospital did it with the man who had Ebola. There are many real life cases where people went to the emergency room, were misdiagnosed, sent home, and later died.</p>
<p>Here’s a report of an 18 year old college student with the flu who was discharged from the ER, died 2 days later, massive organ failure:
<a href=“Error 404”>https://www.rmf.harvard.edu/Clinician-Resources/Case-Study/2012/Young-Man-Dies-from-Flu-After-ER-Discharge</a></p>
<p>So I know that it seems utterly ridiculous in your d’s case – and it probably is pretty ridiculous in 9 out of 10 situations where it occurs… but imagine how you would feel if your d. had been sent home from the emergency room, and then developed some health crisis back on campus that required immediate care… and no care available. I think at some point the policy-makers decided that if a problem was serious enough to warrant a trip to the emergency room, it was worth keeping the kids over the weekend. The policy isn’t there to punish the kids who are healthy enough to return like your daughter – it’s there to protect the kids like the 18 year old in this article who died after the emergency room failed to diagnosis his meningitis: <a href=“http://www.kairelaw.com/medical-malpractice/failure-diagnose-bacterial-meningitis-led-death-high-school-student/”>http://www.kairelaw.com/medical-malpractice/failure-diagnose-bacterial-meningitis-led-death-high-school-student/</a></p>
<p>The real problem is that there isn’t at least a nurse practitioner available 24/7 on the campus. </p>
<p>Calmom, exactly.</p>
<p>We will not know what the daughter went in for, but it was serious enough to merit 24 hour observation. It wasn’t a quick trip to get that toe looked at.</p>
<p>Students don’t always take care of themselves, or have the resources to take care of themselves, or even have the knowledge. Their judgment may also be compromised by a health issue.</p>
<p>A student with asthma who gets a nebulizer treatment in the ER may not have a nebulizer in the dorm, or may not be conscientious in continuing treatments. I know a family who lost a daughter that way.</p>
<p>A kid with seizures might go to the ER, recover quickly, but might still be confused or still in danger of further seizures.</p>
<p>A kid with type 1 diabetes might have an emergency high or low, might not be conscientious in care or may be suffering from some health factor affecting blood sugars that the student would need to deal with with consistent medical help.</p>
<p>A kid who had an apparent concussion could develop a brain bleed suddenly and die without medical help.</p>
<p>The policy that pizzagirl’s daughter ran into may help some and leave others with the collateral damage of being imprisoned for a day or two.</p>
<p>My own family has dealt with variations of all of the above situations, which may affect my viewpoint.</p>
<p>Regardless, I still wonder how the school and hospital manage to defend this policy legally. There must be some standard by which they judge danger to the student before implementing the policy.</p>
<p>For some parents, this policy would be a welcome enforcement of a hospital taking care of a child until the parent could get there, or the child could get help at the school or from a regular doctor. Forsome patients, this policy could be life-saving. And, of course, could prevent law suits too.</p>
<p>Anyone who feels outraged at the civil rights angle hasn’t dealt with institutional behavior much. Once in the system, you lose power and they gain it, period. One of my kids was recently in the hospital for two months and I experienced this every day.</p>
<p>We all come at this from different viewpoints and experiences. Again, I am curious about the legal justification for the policy but could see how it could be beneficial in certain situations, and a patient can always leave AMA (and sleep on the dorm floor of one of the 99% living on campus, fly home, whatever…).</p>
<p>I interpreted that pizza’s d was not held by er but was admitted. </p>