Students dissatisfied with the care they have received at Dick's House finally had an opportunity to voice their frustrations this past spring through the first ever web-based patient satisfaction survey. The results of the survey, made public to the student body in a presentation this week, indicate that more students are happy with Dick's House than some might guess.
The results showed that 85.5 percent of students rated their overall satisfaction with Dick's House good to excellent while only 14.5 percent rated it as poor to fair.
Dr. Ann Bracken presented the results to an audience of undergraduates, graduate students, interns from campus heath programs and directors of every department at Dick's House as part of the first meeting of the Student Health Advisory Committee Tuesday.
The committee, reformed this year, consists of a diverse group of students with an interest in heath related issues and disabilities. The group serves as a link between Dick's House health providers and students.
Almost 800 graduate and undergraduate students participated in the survey, 75.8 percent of whom reported to have used Health Services in the past year.
"We were pleased that we had pretty good ratings. In the past there was this perception that the health services wasn't very good," Jack Turco, the College's director of health services, said.
These numbers, however, represent the entire Dartmouth population, not just undergraduates. Among undergraduates only 80 percent rated their overall experience as good to excellent, and 72 percent would recommend Dick's House to a friend."As previously stated, the last service provider I visited was wonderful. However, certain negative experiences I had with Dick's House early on left a strong enough impression that I only scheduled the appointment out of desperation," an anonymous survey respondent wrote.
Many graduates and undergraduates stressed the need for longer business hours in order to accommodate college student's busy lifestyles.
"Dick's House is not user-friendly for medical students. The hours are adjusted according to undergraduate hours and breaks, which do not apply to us," an anonymous medical student responded.
Many students also took issue with the duration of time many must wait to get an appointment at one of the speciality clinics, especially dermatology. Follow-up care was also a problem for 22.2 percent of students. Others were disappointed by the wait times they encountered once in the office. Dick's House has responded by petitioning the College for more money to hire more health-care providers.
But health-care providers at Dick's House said many criticisms may be unfair.
"Some of the students who received care here were intoxicated. They may not be fairly rating the care. They were ticked off because they were picked up for being intoxicated," Charley Bradley in the nursing department said.
Many students also gave some helpful suggestions such as recommending that Dick's House make students more aware of the services they provide. For example, 44.8 percent did not know that the orthopedic clinic existed, and 61.9 percent of students did not know about the dermatology clinic.
Dick's House personnel plan to address this lack of awareness by holding more programs after orientation and by encouraging students to tell their friends about the positive experiences they've had.
"We do have good services, and it's a shame that some students don't know they're there," Turco said.
Dick's House plans to take all of these statistics and student suggestions into account as they try to improve their level of care. They plan to make targeted changes, improve the survey instrument, and then measure if change improves satisfaction, Bracken said. They will survey students again this Spring.
