Having made rules, it becomes necessary to see to their enforcement. Exceptions should be few and far between. A rule that is not enforced weakens the institutional government, and had better never have been made. If it is good and necessary let it be enforced, if it is neither good nor necessary let it be abolished.
The question of incompatibility of temper among servants is a common perplexity. When it occurs it is just as well to plan for a separation, letting the one who seems to be the strongest element of discord go.
In feeding help there should be always plenty provided—the quality being about what is provided for ward patients. A separate bill of fare for them would entail extra cost, both for material and labor, and they would be none the better for it.
Servants’ Dining Rooms
Is it too much to hope, that, sometime, all hospitals will have a servants’ dining room, where, apart from the heat and odor of the kitchen, they can take their meals in comfort like respectable people? Many of those who have labored on the servant problem seem to have begun at the top for a solution, instead of getting down to the foundations to build up a system. They have sought to establish training schools and give diplomas, believing that was the one thing needful to dignify the position of servants and make them happy and contented in that kind of work. There is certainly no objection to plans for training, providing they are not allowed to obscure other features bearing on the problem. But one does not need to live more than a day in some homes or institutions to find one reason for the prevailing discontent among servants as a class. A hospital that provides an attractive dining room for its help (which could also be used as a reception room for their friends), that sees that they have good bath rooms, lavatories, toilet rooms and sleeping rooms, may expect to attract a superior class of servants, who will have some inducement to remain where provision has been made for their comfort. They will have more respect for themselves and for the institution and better service can be expected.
Sleeping Rooms
There is a possibility of people becoming so charitable that they forget to be just. Some are so intent on providing the most modern equipment for the care of the unknown indigent patient that they entirely overlook the necessity of proper living conditions for those who must help in caring for the unknown indigent. How many hospital managers would throw open with pride, for the inspection of a party of visitors, the doors of their servants’ sleeping quarters, as they do the doors to the free wards? While text-books and teachers are emphasizing the necessity of pure air, the need of a certain number of cubic feet of air-space for each occupant of every sleeping room, hospital authorities are defying these self-same rules of hygiene, by compelling their servants (and often nurses, too) to sleep in crowded quarters without proper means of ventilation, and which sometimes the direct rays of the sun can never penetrate. It is nothing uncommon to find six or eight people crowded into one dormitory not larger than 10x15, and that not only in a New York tenement but in a modern hospital. Every intelligent person professes to believe that “Pure air is as important as pure food in the production of vital energy of the body and mind, but it is another case of not living according to one’s belief. What we greatly need is a realization of the fact that hygiene is not alone a science to be studied, but an art to be practiced, in the hospital, in all its departments and elsewhere.”
Attire
The working attire of the servants may seem a trifling thing to mention, but it too is an indication of the standards of the management in that respect. A hospital is no place for a slovenly, untidy man or woman. If they have not sufficient self respect to keep themselves clean and neatly clad they certainly cannot be expected to cook and serve food in a respectable, appetizing, healthful way or do their work in a cleanly manner. “The apparel oft proclaims the man.” It oft proclaims the institution, too. If the hospital is to make a desirable reputation and maintain it, heads of departments must be on the alert in minor as well as major matters. A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and each individual in the long human chain of hospital employees is either helping to make or mar the good reputation of the institution.
Housekeeper’s Relation to Servants