My name is Heidemarie Hackl  and to me Hospitality is: I invite a guest, I welcome him, I bring him into my home, I put him at his ease, I offer him food and drink. This is what I do when the guest is someone I know.

But what do I do if the guest is someone that I don’t know? Someone who comes to me, filled with worries and pain, who needs to speak with someone, to share his burdens? In such cases, the most important thing is to devote as much time as possible to him or her. To LISTEN. To enable the other person to feel,  “I am not alone. There is someone else who takes my problems and my pain to heart”.

I think it is very important to take seriously the problems that another person may have, to take the time to listen to him or her, to get them to speak out, even if this is not always easy seeing that in our line of work every day we are overwhelmed, being called upon to resolve an infinity of more or less urgent problems.

For in the end, it will be we ourselves who benefit from this, for example, when the other person says to us, “THANK YOU”!  Every once in a while we have to deal with elderly patients who did not have a positive experience the last time they were hospitalized here. Often they say, “things used to be completely different here!”. But then, if you listen to them with patience, in the end they are bound to thank you. “Thank you for letting me get that off my chest”. “Thank you for listening to me”.

Listening to another person is one of the most important sides of Hospitality. It isn’t always necessary that we find a perfect solution for someone’s problems. At times, listening can be enough. Let’s follow the example of Saint John of God: it is not simply a question of providing the best care possible. Above all, we must remember that this is an encounter with another human. And we must make sure to instill this attitude in our new Co-Workers.