UHS Will Sample Students On Nature of Medical Care

The next time you go to the University Health Services (UHS), you may be asked to fill out a "feedback questionnaire" before you leave.

Questions on the survey include: "How long did you have to wait?" "Did you feel your problem was taken care of with medical competence? with understanding and concern? without moral judgment? with adequate explanation?" "If you had any questions, were you able to ask them?"

A student committee on the UHS will administer this questionnaire, from Monday, January 24, until the end of February. Last fall, Margaret McKenna '70, assistant to the director of the UHS, set up the committee to help make the UHS more responsive to patient needs.

"We're spreading out over five weeks, to catch the high pressure time of exams" and the less hectic time at the start of the second semester, McKenna said.

In the past year, the UHS has been a stronghold for questionnaires. A survey organized last spring by Stanley H. King, director of Research at UHS revealed that although only 16 per cent of the undergraduates are dissatisfied with the UHS, more than two-thirds do not feel that there are adequate sources of information about UHS services.

"Many of the concerns about information have been met by the distribution of the booklet (Everything You Always Wanted to Know About the UHS...) this fall." King stated in the conclusion of his study. "Extensive informal feedback...from undergraduates about the booklet has indicated a significant decrease in the information gap, for which they are grateful." King added.

R. Ty Cobb '72, a member of the UHS student committee, said the forthcoming questionnaire differs from King's study because "with Dr. King's questionnaire, everything was in retrospect. This (new study) hits you in the Health Services, when you can remember everything."

Another difference is that King's questionnaire sampled only students, in contrast to the committee's questionnaire which will survey students, faculty, and employees.

In another questionnaire begun last fall, Dr. Warren E.C. Wacker, director of the UHS, found that 80 per cent of faculty and employees have indicated interest in joining a prepaid medical plan to cover their dependents. Wacker hopes to offer such a plan, possibly by January 1973.