Like the food in the dining halls, health care inspires gripes and jokes at summer camps and on college campuses alike. But some students say getting adequate treatment at University Heath Services (UHS) is a serious cause for concern.

Explaining the Undergraduate Council's recent decision to study patient care at UHS, council member Noah Z. Seton '00 says when he speaks to students about their experiences at the College, "invariably one out of three will say UHS needs to be looked at."

While complaints about mental health care and concerns about how health services deals with alcohol-related emergencies have been voiced in recent years, some say adequate treatment is hard to come by across the board.

Although Thomas A. Suarez, a resident tutor in Cabot House who is also a doctor, says he believes the majority of care at UHS is good, he was alarmed by an incident last spring.

Suarez brought a student who was suffering an allergic reaction to peanuts and had gone into "acute anaphylactic shock" to UHS.

He says he was disturbed by what he saw. Events that evening gave him the impression that his own medical training could help the student and he found himself taking an active role in the treatment.

"I feel my particular training in critical care situations allowed the kid to live," he says. "That's why I became dismayed at UHS."

But UHS Director David S. Rosenthal '59 says the perception of health care on campus may be skewed.

"If one or two visits don't go the way they should have gone, that pervades the college environment and becomes the `norm,'" Rosenthal says.

While none filed official complaints, seven students shared their own negative UHS experiences with The Crimson. They say their stories suggest major flaws in campus health care.

Citing experiences ranging from broken bones not detected to serious illnesses misdiagnosed, these seven say they are left with major misgivings about health services at Harvard.

Bad Breaks

Accidents led Zachary H. Smith '00 and Natasha J. Magnuson '01 to UHS, but both emerged with undiagnosed broken bones.

In the spring of his first year at Harvard, Smith was hit by a car as he ran across Memorial Drive between Leverett and Dunster Houses.

Although he was thrown into the air and dazed by the accident, Smith says he refused an ambulance ride to the hospital.