Hall Health, as the students say at the University, gets an overall positive rating from me. My rating is based on the center as a whole, and no individual departments (There's the travel clinic where you can get shots to protect you in different regions of the world, there's the nurse consultants, and family health. There are a couple experiences I've had here and I'm not sure it is more worthwhile to combine these experiences or make separate very short postings so one could more easily choose to read one over the other. Well for now, I will just write whatever spills out.
Upon arriving, of course, this place is located on the school campus, and not too hard to see. There will be a sign in front of the building. Once you enter, like other clinic settings, you won't be exactly sure where to turn and who to go to. Well you will find it soon - they have a set up sort of like a bank to get efficient help when there are many waiting in line.
My first experience was a funny one because they decided to check my eyesight - the guy asked me if I wore glasses. I said I don't wear them because I don't really need them. What I meant was, that my doctors used to tell me that my eyes weren't perfect but weren't as bad as to where I required wearing glasses. I got them eventually for big lectures for when I can't read the board. Anyway, I never wore the glasses. So the guy at the clinic tested my eyes from the big chart with the lit background. I failed pretty bad. I tried reading the lower lines and just gave up when I had to keep moving up to the bigger letters. After that, this guy laughed at me at replied, "you don't need glasses huh?" Well nevertheless, he moved me on and never referred me to an "eye" doctor. I didn't care and shrugged it off. Not correcting my vision was not the end of the world. I was not driving then, and I had glasses that I just wasn't wearing.
A good perk this clinic has is free consultation. Of course they also have a free first visit for first timers, but you must be a UW student. While I was a student there, this benefit was good for every semester. I am not sure if that is the case now.
Anyways, what I really don't want to leave out is my second big visit to this center, which involved a thorough work up from the Nurse Practitioner there. I was sick that day. Of course it was finals week and I was stressed out. I had gone through one test already and was studying for the others when I got a bit sick. I went to the nurse because I thought something was wrong with me. So they asked me a lot of relevant questions - one point for asking questions! I was not the most honest with them, which was bad, but it saved me time to go back to studying. Anyhow, the nurse was very friendly, and did a physical relative to my complaints. At the end, she explained to me what she thought logically and wrote me a slip for the teacher to get out of school for the next day. I was very happy with their understanding and doing an efficient examination for me.
To explain how somethings were and were not done here are many reasons why there were no expensive lab tests performed: It was a one time incident that I went to get help for a common complaint, it was not the emergency room which means the patient believes it is an emergency so the physician must treat it like an emergency and something very important, and I couldn't afford expensive tests. With that said, a good work up can be done without many expensive tests and lab work. That said, I believe the people here did a good job in finding that I was overall healthy that day. Because I went to the clinic immediately and it was a first time thing for me to visit the clinic for my complaint, advice would be to return if there are more symptoms, if I do not get better, if it gets worse. I was basically told to let them know if I had any complaints again, and I went on my way.
I was definitely happy with the experience and how I was treated by the nurse. I felt like she took me seriously and she wanted to help me.
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