AWARENESS, UTILIZATION, AND SATISFACTION OF MEDICAL STUDENTS IN THE HEALTH SERVICES OF THE FEU-NRMF INSTITUTE OF MEDICINE, SCHOOL YEAR 2015-2016

ABSTRACT: Student Health Services (SHS) offered range from clinic visits to hospitalization privileges and other health-related services. A previous study (Aguilar et al., 2007) has shown that most students are aware of the services available but they do not utilize them due to lack of knowledge on how to avail most of these health services. Within this, the research aimed to determine the awareness, utilization and satisfaction of medical students of FEU-NRMF Institute of Medicine on the Student Health Services offered by the school for the school year 2015-2016 by determining the level of awareness of the respondents regarding the SHS offered by the institution as to type of services offered, its coverage, and benefits, how to avail these services, source of information and entitlement to these services; by determining the utilization as to type of SHS utilized and the frequency of utilization; by determining the level of satisfaction on SHS. The research used a descriptive, cross-sectional study involving participants from 1st year to 3rd year students enrolled in FEU-NRMF Institute of Medicine, with the exclusion of 4th year medical students. Respondents was selected through stratified random sampling and systemic sampling based on a computed sample size of 259. Computed distribution of medical students from 1st year to 3rd year in proportion with the sample size are as follows: 95 for 1st year, 86 for 2nd year and 78 for 3rd year medical students. Data collection was in the form of self-administered questionnaire consisting of 9 question pertaining to the awareness of the respondents on the existence of health services offered by the institution, the frequency of their utilization, the degree of satisfaction of the respondents to these services, and another part pertaining to the reasons for reasons for not utilizing these services. Descriptive statistics was used to summarize the processed data and will be presented in graphical formats. Informed consent was obtained from the selected respondents to assert their participation on the study and to emphasize that information that will be gathered will be kept confidential. Conclusively, the results showed that majority (95.1%) of medical students are aware of the health services offered by the institution. However, though they are aware of the health services offered by the institution, 59.8% of the medicine students do not avail these health services. For students who did not avail any services offered, majority is due to lack of knowledge on how to avail these services because the procedure was not clearly known to them. Among the health services offered by the institution, Medical Consultations is the most utilized SHS. Among those who have availed the SHS, their overall satisfaction rate is "good".

Department of Community & Family Medicine