Each year, healthcare providers at the D.S. Chen Health Center work to protect the Academy’s faculty, staff, and over 600 students against a constant onslaught of pathogens, including respiratory diseases and gastrointestinal bugs.
Leading this effort are Director of Medical Services Bryant Benson, nurse practitioners, nurses, and the Health Services employees.
At least four illnesses—flu, COVID-19, mononucleosis, and strep throat—are tested in-house, according to Dr. Benson, and tracked on a weekly basis. However, the Health Center “do[es]n’t always swab for respiratory infections… unless they look like COVID or flu, particularly if [students] have a fever or if they look quite ill,” Dr. Benson added.
“There’s a normal ebb and flow to illness,” Dr. Benson noted. Following summer, winter, and spring breaks, the nurses at the Health Center usually notice an “uptick in cases of illnesses between weeks two and four” after students return to campus.
A disease not on the in-house testing list is norovirus. Along with other gastrointestinal illnesses, cases of norovirus tend to rise between January and March, overlapping with influenza season.
At the end of each year, the Health Center staff conduct a review with larger cohorts. “We see how many people come in with bronchitis, pneumonia… for general data collection,” Dr. Benson commented. He also added that if the number of infections in the community rises to a significantly high level, the Massachusetts Health Department reports that information.
Dr. Benson added, “Sometimes I will see an illness spreading on a team, and I’ll give the coach [of that team] a call,” referencing an outbreak of mononucleosis on the football team last year that spread through sharing water bottles. About water bottle sharing, he said, “People need to use their own.”
The Health Center staff are “always doing standard infection control procedures whether there’s an uptick in illness or not,” Dr. Benson remarked. These include handwashing or hand-sanitizing, wearing masks or gloves when applicable, and cleaning rooms with disinfectant. Regarding the Deerfield Health Services health department, he said, these “universal precautions [have] worked well.”
Regarding student isolation, the Health Center nurses no longer quarantine non-febrile cases of COVID-19. However, individuals diagnosed with strep must still be isolated in the Health Center for the time it takes for two doses of antibiotics to be administered.
Dr. Benson also emphasized that “a fever reflects that someone is ill,” adding that there are many cases of students who, despite claiming they were fine, were “really under the weather and really need[ed] to rest.”
Overall, Dr. Benson expressed that “using hand sanitizer or washing their hands and [practicing] good hygiene habits,” such as not sharing glasses or water bottles and coughing or sneezing into one’s elbow, “all are things that [can] help with infection control,” he added. “If you have a fever or chills, please get checked out at the Health Center.”