Almost every weekday, Yi Xiaoqin, 28, runs between doctors' offices, the cash counter and the operating room in different hospitals in Chongqing. She is not seeking medical help herself but escorting people who need assistance.

Dressed in a red sweater and black pants and wearing a name card around her neck, Yi looks like an office worker. Her voice is gentle and soft, an essential quality for her work as a hospital helper.

In recent years, hospital helpers－a relatively new occupation－have mushroomed in places with a rising percentage of elderly residents. They can be seen in first-tier cities in China such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, as well as other cities like Chongqing and Hangzhou, Zhejiang province.

Their services include helping get an appointment with a doctor or retrieving lab test results. They also accompany patients throughout the treatment process.

"I need to pick up my 4-year-old girl on school days at 5 pm and take care of her at home if she gets sick. So I become a peizhenshi, with flexible working hours," said Yi, who hails from Yunyang, Chongqing.

It's a term for the helpers: pei means accompany, zhen means diagnose and shi means professional.

Data from the Seventh National Census shows that the average size of a Chinese household shrank from 3.1 in 2010 to 2.62 in 2020.

Given the smaller households and an aging population, the need for professional knowledge and care, and the ability to pay are reasons behind the rise of this occupation, said He Wenjiong, vice-president of the Chinese Association of Social Security and head of Zhejiang University's Center of Aging and Health.

"With the rising number of the elderly and ongoing urbanization, the need for hospital helpers will continue to grow," He said.

Not so long ago, Yi met a woman in her 70s, who was a patient at the First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University. The woman lives with her husband in Chongqing and has adult children working in other cities.

"We met at the hospital," Yi said. "She could not find the place she needed to go to and came to me for help."

The woman saw a psychiatrist because she was having trouble sleeping. Yi held her arm while she waited for examinations and then helped her get the subsequent reports.

"She said I was a great help and relieved her anxiety," Yi said.

Yi normally charges 200 yuan ($31.50) for a half-day of service and 300 yuan for a full day. She charged the elderly woman 100 yuan.

Some customers think the fee is too high, and others do not trust helpers, Yi said.

But to Yi's surprise, young people also use helper services. "Young people are more open and trusting," she said.

She once accompanied a woman in her 20s who needed an abortion because the fetus stopped growing. The woman's husband could not accompany her due to a busy work schedule. "I prepared bread and milk and waited for her in front of the operating room. She was emotional and felt cold after the procedure. I held her in my arms and took a taxi with her."

Yi said the hospital helper service sector is growing, supported by an increasing number of older people, as well as young people living away from their parents. She organized a group of 10 helpers, mostly mothers who need flexible working hours.

"Since I have been working in this field, I have met many clients and got to know their hardships," she said. "I treat them as family, offering services and consolation."

In many cases, orders come in by phone, through social media platforms such as Sina Weibo and Xiaohongshu, or e-commerce platforms such as Taobao. Beijing's medical resources have attracted many to seek treatment from around the country.

Cheng Nuo, a 22-year-old college student from Beijing, started working part-time as a hospital helper in January for some pocket money.

"Considering the COVID-19 pandemic, people who live away from their parents would want someone to accompany their parents during visits to a hospital in a different city," she said.

Cheng described the experience of accompanying a couple in their 50s who hail from Shandong province to Peking University Third Hospital to treat the man's leg. Their daughter works in Shenzhen and could not be with them.

"She found me online and paid me to help her parents," Cheng said. "As she's afraid that her parents might not want to pay the service, we agreed to pretend to be college classmates."

Cheng took the couple to get medical examinations and helped them get reports from the automatic machine.

"I think the idea of peizhenshi is to provide companionship and help," she said. "I would want someone to accompany my parents when I am not able to do so."

The job duties of hospital helpers need further clarification, and their professionalism needs to be improved so that customers can trust them more, said He, of the Chinese Association of Social Security.

"In addition to honesty and sincerity, service providers need to have necessary information about medical institutions and medical knowledge," He added.