A Residence Hall Director (RHD) is a full-time, live-in professional staff member responsible for a residence hall's day-to-day operations, including supervising Resident Assistants and serving on a scheduled on-call rotation for after-hours crisis response. Because most campus health centers operate weekday daytime hours only, that on-call rotation regularly puts an RHD in the position of de facto first responder to a medical issue at night—despite having no clinical training. Their role covers coordinating a response, not providing one.
On-site, licensed clinical access changes what that coordination actually looks like: instead of waiting for a health center to reopen or sending a student to the emergency room for something that doesn't need one, an RHD can connect that student to a real clinician on the spot. See: After-Hours Care Gap in Campus Housing.
Learn more about the fourth model and how the OnMed CareStation® is the campus health strategy that most universities are missing.
It usually falls to the Executive Director of Housing and Residential Communities, who holds budget authority over housing operations and staffing but not always over the campus health center itself. RAs report to a Residence Hall Director or Area Coordinator, but the Executive Director of Housing and Residential Communities ultimately owns the liability and staffing strategy when an after-hours incident occurs. When an RHD or RA without clinical training has to judge whether a symptom is an emergency, institutional liability, staff burnout, and parent communication land on the housing department.
Not necessarily. On-site, licensed clinical access can extend coverage across residence halls without adding clinical headcount to a housing department's operating budget. It gives RHDs and RAs professional clinical backup instead of sole responsibility for the judgment call.
Every term here points to the same gap in healthcare access. See how the CareStation closes it.
Talk to Our Team
.jpeg)
.png)
.png)