Date: 3/3/17
Type: Immersion
Location: From Notre dame to St Joseph Regional Medical Center Mishawka Campus and back
Team Participants: Alexandra Charron and Joe Krause
The following is a supplemental perspective to the ethnographic summary previously provided by Joe Krause detailing the interviews with uber drivers and the statistics and costs of our trip.
On Friday, Joe and Alex took an uber to the St Joseph Regional Medical Center from Notre Dame and back to provide a contrast to to Dan and Coles bus ride. We aimed to compare time, ease, and cost of using uber instead of the transpo bus. Once arriving at the medical center we tried to navigate the hospital using the map to find the various offices we needed to interview people at. We tried to use the map in order to measure the ease of navigating the facility, as if people get lost looking for their medical office they make arrive late to their appointments causing them to have to reschedule.
We found the uber trip to be a very effective method of transportation. The trip to the Medical center took 11 minutes and cost 13.51 and the rip home took 12 minutes and cost $7.28.
Joe and I did have to wait 8 minutes outside in the cold which might be hard if you are sick or elderly, but could always have the option of waiting inside.
Once inside the hospital, Joe and I walked around and easily located a facility map. While the map was fairly easy to understand, all of the hallways looked the same and Joe got quite lost coming back from the bathroom. He said he walked around for 6 minutes trying to find where I was as ” all of the hallways look the same and there are lots of corners”.W
We observed that while some signs has a Spanish translation below them, others didn’t. This could also be a cause of delay and late arrival to appointments if patients can’t read the signs to figure out where they are going.
While standing in the lobby, Joe and I overheard a couple sitting in the hallway ” this goddam bus takes so long”. They had been sitting there for a considerable amount of time as we kept walking past them while conducting interviews and research. They unfortunately declined to speak to use when approached.
Key Takeaways
- Uber is a time effective way of getting to appointments but $20+ round trip is expensive.
- It was easy and dropped us door to door and picked us up right when we were finished.
- It required the use of a smart phone and credit card/ bank account
- The hospital was slightly confusing to navigate, and some signs are not in Spanish .
- People waited a long time for the bus .