Awareness and Utilization of Health Services Provided to Ain Shams University Students

Background: Though little attention had been paid to health services provided to them and sparse researches had been undertaken exploiting awareness and utilization of such service, University students represent the future of families, communities, and countries. Objectives: The present study was conducted to describe health services provided for Ain Shams University (ASU) students, to measure awareness and utilization of such services by ASU students and to measure the degree of satisfaction of students and health care providers of these services. Methods: A cross section study was carried out on 1090 Ain Shams University (ASU) students in different faculties, attendants of the university medical centres, hospital and outpatient clinics and 65 health care providers of the services in these sites. Self administered questionnaire was addressed to students inquiring about their awareness and utilization of the university health services and their satisfaction of these services. Health care providers were asked about the types and quality of services they provide and their satisfaction as an internal customer of the service. Results: From a total of 1090 students participated in the study, about 81.2% were aware about the services of medical administration and 67.2% of them had a history of utilization of these services. Only 23.8% of students attended health education sessions in their faculties, and 47.3% knew about health education sessions from their friends and 38.2% from posters in the faculty. About half of the students rated different aspects of health services offered by medical administration as poor and average. When asking medical staff about their satisfaction regarding the quality of services provided to students, around two third (67%) of them rated it as ‘average’ and ‘bad’ for most of the services. Conclusion and Recommendations: Services provided to ASU students are not satisfactory for both the university students and the health care providers. The health services program needs to be developed in order to increase the awareness and the satisfaction of the students by the health services provided to them,.