When Students Voice Complaints, Are UHS Administrators Listening?

When flu season starts slurping over Cambridge, people's malicious feelings turn to University Health Service.

Tales of being thrown out on the street with 103 degree fever at 3 a.m. spread quickly. Stories of wicked doctors who sneeringly refuse treatment become more prevalent as colds and stuffed-up noses become more irritating.

Is UHS listening?

Jane Leavy '68, assistant to the director of the Health Services, said that since UHS first hired an ombudsman for students general health care has improved and more complaints have been taken seriously.

"When I went to school here (in the '60s) they didn't even have gynecological services. They didn't see any need for them," she said.

"When a student has a complaint about any aspect of UHS--administrative, medical or personal--I want to hear about it," said Leavy, Margaret S. McKenna '70's replacement in the student liason post. She said that every complaint is looked into and patterns of complaints are studied to see how existing bad situations can be changed.

"When a student comes in with a specific complaint about a doctor, I will try to talk the matter over with the doctor. Then, the doctor will either write a letter to the patient, or she will try to arrange a meeting between the two.

"My office has no jurisdiction over the hiring and firing of doctors," she said, "but if a pattern of complaints about one person is especially noticeable, I will discuss the matter with Dr. Wacker (Dr. Warren E.C. Wacker, Director of UHS). It is possible that a doctor would be fired--complaints are taken that seriously," she said.

She added that one problem was getting student feedback on services. One way to register complaints is the forms in the UHS waiting room, she said. Another way, is through the Consumer's Council--a group of students and doctors. There is a representative of the Consumer's Council in each house, she said.

Dr. Preston K. Munter, Chief of Psychiatry for UHS, said yesterday that one of the biggest administrative complaints concerned the walk-in clinic. "Last year we instituted a system whereby a student keeps as his doctor the first doctor he sees in the walk-in clinic. Of course if this relationship does not work out, students can change, but we think that students are overall more satisfied if they pick one doc and keep him as their doc all through their time at Harvard."

Munter said he felt that some of the complaints about the lack of solicitude on the part of doctors had to do with the age of Harvard students. "One of the purposes of Harvard is to encourage autonomy. We don't want to encourage passive dependence in our patients.

"Many of the students who come here had parents who were overly solicitous. It makes good medical sense on our part to provide a remedy and to send the patient home. We can make errors and I suppose we do make errors. But the major function of the health services is treatment, prevention and education and I think we provide that."

Leavy said that another issue bothering students was that they were not permitted to read their records. "This is an issue that the Consumer's Council is discussing, but right now it is not Health Service policy to allow students to read their records. However, if a student feels that there is something unfair in their records that is affecting their treatment, they should come to see me. In extreme cases, students can sign their records over to me and we can discuss them together."