Service quality, encounter satisfaction, and the delivery of student health services

In a study of the interpersonal character of university health service encounters and accordingly, the mutual satisfaction of interaction between providers and student/patients, 270 provider-student/patient pairs completed an instrument adapted from SERQUAL (Zeithaml et al., 1990). The majority of student/patients were white females 18-24 years of age. Although both providers and student/patients were satisfied with most of their encounters, a significant proportion of encounters involved partial satisfaction in which student/patients were satisfied and providers were not. Result are discussed in terms of four standard tests of model utility: accountability, predictability, fruitfulness, and practice.