Students are reporting long wait times for health appointments — which the director of UBC Student Health Service (SHS) said is due to an increased demand that emerged from the pandemic.
Students The Ubyssey spoke with said that they have often had to wait a month or more to book an appointment with SHS. This is an issue, specifically for international students or students from outside of Vancouver who don’t have a family doctor.
Marie Erikson, a first-year arts student seeking mental health support at SHS, has experienced such delays. She tried to book an appointment at the beginning of the academic year in September, where she was only able to visit the clinic in October.
Erikson has been on regular prescription medication for two and a half years for depression and anxiety, and was seeking more prescription drugs after moving to Vancouver from the United States. The delay in getting an appointment concerned her because she was worried that she might experience withdrawal symptoms.
Erikson’s experience is not unique — Interim Medical Director of Student Health Service Simon Chen said SHS saw an increase in students seeking mental health support since the pandemic.
“[Mental health appointments] typically require significantly more time than physical health appointments, thereby decreasing the number of available spots during the day. Further, most [mental health] issues require ongoing follow-ups,” he wrote in a statement to The Ubyssey.
Another key issue is that SHS acts “as the family medicine clinic for students who are from out of Vancouver,” according to Chen.
“With the increase in number of students year over year, particularly from other countries or provinces, the demand in SHS also increased because these students from out of Vancouver cannot see their regular family physicians on a regular basis,” Chen wrote.
This is the case for Ahanaa Puri, a second-year kinesiology student. She tried to book an appointment with SHS when she had the flu and needed antibiotics. However, she was told the wait would be two to three weeks to get an appointment with SHS.
“Obviously they do have a backlog of people who need attention but in my case specifically I kind of needed to see someone like that day or within the next day because I was in really bad shape,” said Puri.
As an international student, with no family doctor, Puri ended up going to a walk-in-clinic, but continued to face frustrating delays in getting an additional appointment after she had finished her antibiotics
Chen said telehealth visits and the fact that four to five of booked appointments get cancelled may also increase the wait time to get an appointment at SHS.
“It can be difficult to diagnose certain conditions over the phone or on video,” Chen said of virtual appointments. “So, what was a simple one visit condition may now require two patient visits to assess and treat.”
To address the issues going forward, Chen said SHS is monitoring public health guidelines and attempting to bring in certain changes to lessen the wait time.
“Most recently, we opened up to allow patients to book an in-person appointment without requiring an initial Telehealth/virtual visit,” Chen wrote.