The student says the nurse practitioner changed her birth control prescription on that occasion and after a later visit. The change, she says, made her sick and moody.

"She put me on pills that made me sick and sometimes made me cry," says the first year. "When I went home, my doctor said she couldn't believe they changed my prescription. She said what they had done was wrong."

Dr. David S. Rosenthal '59, director of UHS since 1989, says some of the stories students tell are quite valid. "But the stories students tell are quite valid. "But the stories never get to where they should be until weeks later," he says. "Then we can't do anything about it."

While he acknowledged that doctors sometimes make mistakes, Rosenthal also says that student expectations of UHS are too high.

"College health service is misunderstood by students and their parents," he says. "If they have a headache, they think they need a catscan."

Both Rosenthal and Zuromskis see matching students with personal primary care physicians as the solution to the problem of perceived and actual inefficient care.

"Set yourself up with a primary care physician," Rosenthal says. "In the long run it will reduce health care costs and improve quality."

But UHS has very little success convincing students to choose their own personal physician. Although Rosenthal says that 90 percent of faculty and staff have a primary care physician, the Crimson poll showed that only 37 percent of students have their own personal doctor at UHS.

Although in the past Rosenthal experimented with assigning primary care physicians to students, UHS officials are only instructed to suggest this option when students come to the building seeking care.

Many officials favor a system in which primary care physicians are assigned before students enroll. At MIT, students receive a biography, picture, and business card of their doctor in the mail the summer before their first year.

"I favor the assignment of a doctor before-hand," says Mark Goldstein, chief of pediatrics and student health services at MIT. "One girl said she called in because she had a letter and a card. That saved her one step. Just having the card is an incentive to call."

And some officials at UHS question why primary care physicians are not assigned to students, like they are at MIT.

"It does sound like a good idea to me," says Kristen Heller, a registered nurse. "I belong to an HMO and as soon as I signed up they made me choose a doctor [for my primary care]. It makes a lot of sense."

But UHS's main problem seems to be communicating with the student body. Not only has this lack of contact prevented undergraduates from understanding the value of a personal doctor, but it also prevents UHS from dispelling its image as an inefficient source of health care.

"I don't know how to get rid of the rumors," Heller says, "I wish I did."