Early on a Tuesday morning last December, Richard Lee '96 had a very rude awakening.

Fast asleep in his third-floor room at 29 Garden St., Lee rolled off his bed and broke his jaw on a roommate's chair.

"My proctor called up UHS and they told me to sleep it off," Lee says. "But my proctor looked at me and I was in shock, so they brought me in anyway."

Lee says a doctor in the University Health Services' (UHS) urgent care clinic told him they couldn't handle the situation. So he was transferred to the Massachusetts General Hospital, where his jaw was set. Later in the day, Lee went back to UHS, where he spent the night.

On Wednesday, while still on morphine, Lee was discharged from UHS. But despite the morphine, his pain persisted and the left side of his head throbbed. He returned to UHS on Thursday, only to be told he had an ear infection that had nothing to do with his broken jaw.

But as Saturday approached, Lee realized the pain might be too severe for him to fly home for winter break. On Saturday morning, he went to UHS again where he received an injection of Demerol, a potent narcotic painkiller. He was given more morphine and was handed a Valium pill to take on the plane.

The triumvirate of drugs nearly knocked Lee out, but he made it home to his doctor--who said his jaw had been set poorly and was putting pressure on his ear.

"The doctor back home said [the Mass. General doctors] set my jaw wrong," says Lee. "He had to redo it. I spent the week in pain because [UHS] couldn't recognize this problem."

Lee, who spent the next 47 days with his mouth wired shut, is now known by many first-years for his ordeal. Many undergraduates say stories like Lee's have shaped their perceptions of UHS in a negative light, often breeding widespread distrust of the service.

Students and doctors agree that care at UHS is generally adequate, but once in a while, as with most any large health care provider, mistakes do occur. Those stories circulate around campus, often escalating into horrific accounts that hurt UHS' credibility among students. UHS' lack of communication with the students makes it harder to restore that credibility.

An overwhelming majority of 80 students interviewed last month say friends' accounts of misdiagnoses--not their personal experiences--make them fearful of using the health service.

But in a Crimson poll of 317 undergraduates conducted last week, 70 percent of students rated the quality of care as "fair" or higher, with only 14 percent answering that the care is "poor." Eighty-one percent of those polled say they have been to UHS at least once. The poll has a five percent margin of error.

Almost all of the 15 UHS doctors who were interviewed say student concerns with the quality of care at UHS are mostly a matter of perception.

"When I was an undergraduate here the stories were exactly the same," says Dr. Peter J. Zuromskis '66, director of the urgent care clinic. "Usually it's second or third hand information. The students say, 'I've never been to UHS, but...'"

The Crimson investigation also found that student claims of incompetent doctors at UHS are unfounded. Most of the 10 full time and 13 part-time physicians are experts in their fields, as they have graduated from top medical schools and practice in other area hospitals.

In addition, because UHS serves faculty and staff in addition to students, it can afford to employ specialists in more than 15 different fields, from allergy to rheumatology.