Students’ Knowledge and Frequency of Access to University Health Care Services

Abstract

This study aimed to determine the students’ knowledge and frequency of access to university health care service. Specifically, it aimed to compare the knowledge and frequency of access to university health care service according to sex academic year level. It also sought to know the relationship of knowledge about and access to university healthcare service to discover the weak points of care as reflected in the problems encountered by the students in seeking the university healthcare services. Stratified random sampling was used to select the 380 respondents from the 8 colleges and 2 institutions. The study was conducted from January 2017 to April 2017. The Quantitative Descriptive Design was used to gauge the extent of knowledge and access to university health care service by Benguet State University health care students. The list of enrollees for school year 2016-2017 was obtained from the registrar’s office. A questionnaire was utilized by the data collection. It was divided into five parts: Part I contain the letter to the respondents; Part II contains the personal profile of the respondents; Part III the list of university healthcare services are intended to gauge the respondents’ knowledge; Part IV the list of university healthcare service intended to gauge the respondent’s access to the services; lastly, Part V covers the list of problems encountered by the respondents which were obtained from the pre-test of the study. The data gathered were studied and analyzed using Weighted Mean, one sample T-test, post-hoc test, personal correlation, and Z- test for single proportion, and analysis of variance (ANOVA). Based on the findings of the study, the university health facility is encouraged to conduct the orientation on the up-to-date university healthcare service to increase the level of awareness and thus, increase the frequency of access. Moreover, while the part the reflects the problems encountered to the access to healthcare service was not significantly considered as a problem by students, the top three problems on the list were availability of doctors, lack of equipment, and distance from home. Lastly, future researchers are also encouraged to conduct a similar study on exploring the male and female aspect of knowledge and access to healthcare service as well as the reasons behind the moderate knowledge and access to healthcare service since it was addressed in the study. Also, the study was only limited to year level and sex. Hence, the researchers recommend future studies on university healthcare service per college along the following areas; a) health assessment b) diagnostic examination c) therapeutic examination d) health education and e) dental services.