Wraithler
1/5
I am an international student at UWE. Health system is very different in here than my country so I struggled a lot when I first came here. I tried to use the health centre at UWE for couple times and had the worst experience ever. People in the reception are obviously not want to be there and every time I went there to get help, they made sure that I feel not welcomed. I had tonsillitis last year that caused me extreme fever and body ache, was not even able to attend my classes. My friends walked me to the health centre so I can get treatment, since I was not able to stand by myself. Of course we welcomed by sulky face and asked what was wrong, told them my issue and all I got was “you should go to pharmacy”. At that point you could tell that I was in pain and not well, they were nothing close to be understanding whatsoever, no empathy. Like that’s not enough I had to walk to pharmacy to get anything to feel better, just for people in the pharmacy to tell me that they can’t do anything about it without a prescription and I should see a doctor. Thankfully the person who works in the pharmacy saw my situation and examined me themselves that’s how I could get a treatment. I genuinely don’t like the way they treat people over there, I understand that it must be frustrating for them considering how busy university is and they have to deal with a lot of people. But I didn’t deserve to be treated like that, it actually traumatised me since it wasn’t just one but multiple times. I booked an appointment recently on old school gp’s website, the lady in the gp told me they don’t book appointments online that’s why I had to, which I didn’t have any clue they would send me to UWE until I got the confirmation message. When I first went there, since I could never got to see someone actually working, I didn’t really know what to do so checked in through the screen in the entrance. Went to the reception to ask if it is all I need to do ,even though I really didn’t want to, there was a lady seemed to be training a new staff. The lady was showing and explaining something so I waited them to get done. There was no eye contact, even no “a second” or anything. I just stood there for a while and said hello, then lady told me can you give me a second. I went to the waiting are straightaway, since they were really busy with whatever was on the screen. The health centre itself needs to do serious changes in their training or whatever the reason that makes reception staff this grumpy, rude and treat patients horribly. I have seen so many reviews about how rude these people are, mainly from international students which made me think about more serious aspects, University of West of the England has a big number of international students and we deserved to be treated as anyone else. Hope this can reach to someone who actually would care.
