EP Magazine

In sickness and in health

Diary of an anonymous reader

Is the industry ready to face up to the impact of an aging population?

It’s a Monday and the husband has just called to say his wife won’t be coming in. Tennis Elbow/St.Vitus Dance/an Overdose of Strictly Come Dancing prevents her getting to a phone or communicating directly other than by smoke signal.

So he has made his gruff excuses and got over the babysitting problem that his being called back on shift unexpectedly has caused both them and you. You are cross, it’s the fourth incident this year and you’ve only just started the month of March. When she does turn up she’s charming and helpful and the guests rave about her, but when she doesn’t she lets herself, you, her co-workers and the customers down.

It’s not like project work or writing a book where you can make up for lost time later. A meal or overnight stay is a perishable commodity and the experience of being a person down cannot be erased when the customer doesn’t get what he or she wanted on time or served correctly...

Should you fire her? Should you conduct a performance review? Or save time and hire someone/anyone as a replacement from Poland instead?

Or should you put away your frustration and believe she might just be telling the truth?

At least that’s what I used to think until I went to hospital for a bout of illness myself and saw two phenomena that were entirely new to me.

Firstly, I saw people dedicated to not taking time off but turning up through thick and thin to ensure their team could cope. They knew that failure to support the team meant a person down, they were so dedicated to each other, the bonds ran so deep. But then these were the elite, the storm troopers, the SAS of their profession where the long hours, the alternate day and night shifts were worn like badges of honour deep in the bowels of the intensive care unit. If one of them couldn’t get in, then they self-policed and sorted it before it became management’s problem.

Theirs was a zone where the desperate plight of so many of their cases meant they held people’s futures tight in their hands... and that invariably led to errors
and death.

Death thankfully is not commonplace in the hospitality side of looking after people, unlike a hospital, but its’ bizarre how the two words sit side by side and yet currently are so far apart in expedition.

The second vision was of motivation transcending the job description and ‘taking care of people’ moving way beyond the norm. The kicks for the auxiliaries and nurses came from helping others less well off even though they themselves led lives marginalised by poor pay. That didn’t wake them up and make them look forward to work, the thrill lay in seeing a few of their patients recover and providing dignity for the rest.

Press the fast forward button and in 25 years, or a generation’s time, hospitals and hospitality will be inextricably wed. Our population is ageing so fast that the hotel and hospital divisions will blur.

It won’t matter if you’re late for work or throw a Monday ‘sickie’ in the same way in hotels, because the internal peer pressure to get to do your bit to help peoples’ lives will have overtaken the moral compass. It won’t just be in Eastbourne either, the population is ageing all over and nursing homes and hotels won’t be able to cope with the new demand. So if you want to see the future, brush up on your bedside manner.