Hotel-style housekeepers are doing the rounds at York Hospital in a bid to make patients' stays more comfortable. STEPHEN LEWIS joined one on her rounds.

TINA Hardy says a cheerful "Morning, ladies!" as she walks into one of two women's bays at York Hospital's Ward 35. There is a chorus of greetings in return from the mainly elderly occupants. Then one frail, white-haired woman in a corner bed signals that she would like a word. Tina bends down to listen, her face sympathetic.

"I will come back and chat with you in a moment," she says, giving the woman a conspiratorial pat on the arm. "Just give me five minutes, and I will come back."

This is something she has become used to in her short time as Ward 35's housekeeper. In the space of five short weeks, hers has become the friendly face patients tend to turn to first if they are worried or anxious or want someone to talk to.

Ward 35 is a medical ward for patients with serious blood conditions, including leukaemia. Tina isn't about to betray her patient's confidence by telling me what the problem is.

"She's just very anxious," she says, as she shows me around the rest of the ward. "She called for me first thing this morning. I've spent a lot of time with her today - but it doesn't matter if I have to spend all day with her. It needs to be done. That's what is important."

It is refreshing to find someone in a busy hospital who always has time to listen, no matter what.

Being the patient's friend, however, is just part of Tina's job.

She is one of four new hotel-style 'housekeepers' making the rounds on selected wards at the hospital in a six month pilot scheme aimed at finding better ways of making patients comfortable.

Just as in Edwardian times the housekeeper was responsible for keeping the house spick and span, so Tina brings order to the busy chaos of Ward 35. She is not medically trained and has no part in providing care for any of the 30 patients here. What she does do is help ward sister Andrea Redin and her team of harassed nurses by taking off their shoulders the burden of making sure everything is clean, tidy and in its place.

From 8am to 4pm Monday to Friday her trim figure in neat black skirt and jacket is constantly on the go, doing the rounds of 'her' ward to make sure everything is as it should be.

Sink in the ladies' loo blocked? Tina will sort it. Not enough clean linen? Tina is on the case. Fluff under the beds? Tina will have a word with the cleaners.

It was even Tina who called in the hospital's bug-busters when ants were found crawling from behind a pipe in one of the ward's rooms.

You sense as soon as you meet her that she knows how to get things done. Her 17 years as a health authority domestic supervisor, followed by ten years in retail management, no doubt help. It's not that she's at all bossy, she insists.

"But things have happened pretty quickly, as a rule! Because I'm going around and around the ward area, I tend to notice things. And I have time to chase things up."

Ward sister Andrea Redin admits she can hardly believe the difference Tina has made.

Before, it was the responsibility of nursing staff to make sure the ward was kept clean and tidy after the cleaners had been; and to report anything that needed repairing, and make sure storage cupboards were fully stocked and broken equipment was replaced.

"The quality of the environment is a high priority for everyone," Andrea says. "It is my priority as well. But obviously, delivery of clinical care has to take the priority."

In the relentless rush of looking after patients, nursing staff didn't always have time to make sure the ward was as clean and tidy as they would have liked it.

Having Tina has made all the difference. If there is a blocked sink on the ward that needs dealing with, Tina has time to chase it and chase it until something is done. "I just can't be on the phone all the time trying to push that," Andrea says. "Tina can".

She has even managed to get on top of the ward's lost property problem. It's a perennial problem on any hospital ward, Andrea says.

There was always supposed to be a system in place for dealing with it - making a note of when and where property was found, and disposing of it after three months. Busy nursing staff, however, never had time to run the system properly - and it just used to pile up.

"It was a question of me saying 'this pile is too big!'" Andrea admits. Now, Tina scrupulously logs and dates each piece of lost property and tries to find out who it belongs to. It's a system that works.

The result is a cleaner and tidier ward and less harassed nurses, who now have more time to do what they are trained for - look after patients.

The patients have noticed the difference in the five weeks Tina has been on the ward.

In one of the men's bays, Greg Gregory is sitting looking out of the window. He's been in and out of hospital for a dozen years, first because of Crohn's disease, more recently because of a blockage caused by a gall stone. He'll have to come back in again soon for an operation to remove it.

As soon as Tina walks in, his face lights up.

"She's ideal for the job," he says, while Tina tries to shush him then resorts to pretending she's bribed him to say nice things. "She relaxes the ward. When Tina isn't here, all the nursing staff are doing their job, but it's bang! bang! bang! When Tina's here, it's bang! bang! followed by laughter."

He grins. "We all know when she's not there because it is quiet. When she comes on, the place starts buzzing."

Andrea agrees that a big part of Tina's importance is that she is often seen by patients as being more approachable than busy nurses. "I think because she is non-clinical, sometimes that feels less threatening to patients," she says.

"If you went to a hotel, you would expect someone to have that role of mothering you a bit. You know there is the cook, the waiting staff, but you want to know there is somebody there who has that responsibility for making sure the environment is what you expect too."

So far, with no extra funding from the Government to pay for them, only three wards and the hospital's renal unit are lucky enough to have a housekeeper.

But so impressed are hospital managers by the way the scheme is going, they plan to recruit three more housekeepers to start in September.

And ultimately, funding allowing, the idea will be to roll them out across most of the hospital's wards.

"This is the way forward," says the hospital's director of facilities Danny Morgan.

"The new housekeeping role will help us to make the patient's stay as pleasant as possible. Patients will be cared for in a well-maintained environment that is safe, welcoming, comfortable and reassuring."

Which is just what they should be able to expect.

Updated: 09:57 Wednesday, May 19, 2004