Master Business Project > elope: The end of ELOPE 2009

This is the end! I cannot believe time has passed so fast. It was 4 months ago that we started this project, and now no more weekly meetings, no more mind, body and soul... The presentation on the 9th went well and we got good feedback in order to make it better for the next day.

June 6th : Arrival at Bern and meeting up with my team, Parvati

I made my way alone to Bern since all the other MHAs will come later. I can’t wait to see all my team again and work with them live, not just over the internet. I’m meeting up with part of the team on the 6th and the whole team is reunited on the 7th. We are all there and there is much work to do. We get cracking and we do the finishing touches on the design manual, the posters the model and the case study. It took longer than expected and we all worked long into the night. But we are ready! It was great to see that we are all working like a perfect Swiss watch, by now we know each other and now how each of us works and ticks. First presentation, June 9th in Burgdof in front of our peers and the judging committee, we are the second team to present. We think that we are in a good position for the presentation because since we are not first we will not get bombarded with some general questions and we are not last therefore the judges will not be tired.

This will be the first time that the Parvati team presents its ideas to people outside the group. We have come a long way since the first review. We have lost 5 members and have changed our project more times than I can remember. All these misfortunes have made us stronger and more united as a group and to show this we decided to be colour coordinated with our clothing. We picked green as our colour because it represented our project well and green is hope as well.

The first presentation went well and we will use some of their recommendations to adjust the presentation for the second round on June 10th. All our work was based around creating a scenario/story and for this we placed ourselves in the place of the patient (client) in order to understand what happens to them. After creating these stories, we determined to concentrate our efforts on stimulating the patients’ senses. We concentrated our efforts on the three main areas in the hospital in Affeltern am Albis where we believed the senses could be stimulated best and would affect the greater part hospital community. We suggested some changes in the ER in order to calm the working area for both patient and staff.

The other two areas that we suggested be worked on are new areas that we created. One is a green house and the other is a space of silence. We got excellent feedback on our space of silence and this makes me very happy for Eduardo because I know he worked very hard on it. The green house was created to be movable and adaptable to the hospitals needs and wants. Due to its flexibility the green house could be implemented in any hospital and not just in Affeltern am Albis.

After both our presentations, all that was left was to PARTY!!! We had an excellent evening in a castle organized by the great team at the University of Bern. We had a great evening and said goodbye to all our new friends. It was hard to believe that I would not have my weekly meeting with Elissa, Katrin and Eduardo. I will miss them and hope that I will get the chance once again in the future to work in an interdisciplinary project again. It was a great experience and I enjoyed it greatly even if we had many times of frustration and misunderstanding.
This was one of the best experiences that I have ever lived, and I thank EHL for participating in this project of ELOPE 2009.

The "elope" project

		This year's "elope" project, on human-centered medicine, is one of the two final Master Business Projects for the 2009 Master of Hospitality Administration graduating class.