Students suffering from illness have not had the chance to spend the night—and be monitored by trained nurses—at the Student Health Center since the University tossed out its last overnight bed in 2002. Although this particular care aspect has disappeared, the majority of students are not aware of this loss, and only a select few believe they would have benefited from the overnight attention.
Last semester, freshman Roberto Bazzani awoke with severely inflamed tonsils and an inability to swallow. He was diagnosed with mononucleosis at the West Campus clinic that morning. He flew home the next day and took three weeks to recover.
“At my condition of mono, I don’t know if I would even have used the overnight infirmary although I definitely would have stayed there before my glands swelled up to the point they were,” Bazzani said. “If the infirmary had been there, I would have stayed a couple of nights just so my condition wouldn’t have worsened.”
Even though the bed space helped ill students that nurses felt should be observed, the unit barely averaged 1.1 students each night in 2002 although it had enough staff and resources for 10 students. Most students never used the facility.
“I never really had a night-time problem that bad,” senior Jeannie Chen said. “I suppose if I did, I would just go to Duke Med’s Emergency Department. I think the people who need that can find a bed at Duke Med.”
Originally, an 18-to-20-bed unit was located in the building that now houses the Pre-Major Advising Center on East Campus. Nurses provided overnight care for students like Bazzani.
Twenty years ago, it moved to the fourth floor of the Duke Clinic Building. This 10-bed unit provided 24-hour walk-in services with triage nurses for students with conditions such as mononucleosis, colds, urinary tract infections and alcohol overuse—all covered under the student health plan. The overnight stays had the benefit of providing “mother-type care” and a nice place for students with stress and mental health issues to spend a day or two, said Jean Hanson, administrative director for Student Health.
When the Student Health Center moved from its fourth-floor facility to its current location in Duke Hospital South, plans for the new clinic included a four-bed unit. But lack of space and funds led to the elimination of overnight bed program in 2002.
“It was a service that sounds good on paper but is probably not as necessary as it seemed years ago,” said Dr. William Purdy, assistant clinical professor and interim medical director for Student Health. “With a new working agreement with the Emergency Department [at Duke], from the financial point of view, it made sense to close it.”
Purdy noted the Emergency Department provides a clinical evaluation unit with a 12 to 14-bed capacity where patients are kept for observation. Also, while the Student Health Center may no longer offer overnight beds, it still provides services until 10 p.m. and 24-hour telephone access to a nurse’s advice.
“It was a very nice thing to have, and we’re sorry for the care part that we don’t have,” Hanson said. “If we had been able to maintain it we would have, and one of the things that we’re constantly working on is helping students move away from the dependence of their families and their home and out into the real world.”
In fact, most universities are trending away from overnight infirmaries, including Williams College, George Washington University and Bowdoin College. Dartmouth College, Middlebury College and the University of Connecticut still maintain their overnight infirmaries.
“In many ways, all we’ve lost is the bed,” Hanson said. “We haven’t lost the care or the nurses.”
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