HKMU nurses embody the spirit of voluntary service
HKMU nursing alumni and student
“Becoming a nurse allows us to use our professional knowledge and skills to engage in various types of voluntary work.”
“Even seemingly minor roles can make a big difference.”
Queenie Kwan Ching-man, Senior Lecturer, School of Nursing and Health Sciences; graduate of Bachelor of Nursing
Brian Wong Kit, graduate of Bachelor of Nursing with Honours in General Health Care
Healthcare is a human-centred industry. To cultivate a community spirit in students, the HKMU School of Nursing and Health Sciences (N&HS) regularly organises service activities for them to participate in. In addition to these School-led initiatives, many N&HS staff and students are actively involved in external community work.
For example, graduate Queenie Kwan, who is now a Senior Lecturer at N&HS, started volunteering with the Hong Kong Red Cross as a teenager. Coincidentally, as we found out in the interview, Brian Wong, Kelvin So and Penry Lee all began their volunteer journey in secondary school.
Queenie had made a pact with a primary school friend to reunite in a non-school-based Red Cross Youth Unit, only to find herself left alone after signing up. Being someone who does not give up easily, she continued anyway, and has since persisted in volunteering for two decades. Brian joined the Cadet Corps of the Civil Aid Service, along with some schoolmates in Secondary 2, because there was not a lot of entertainment available, and he gradually developed a habit of volunteering. Kelvin was assigned by his school to the Hong Kong Red Cross for extra-curricular activities in Secondary 1. And Penry, the newest volunteer among the four, decided to join the same group, also in his first year of secondary school, a commitment he has kept for nine years.
Volunteering took Brian around the world. In 2013, he left his busy position as an operating theatre nurse and assumed a teaching role, which gave him space to participate in overseas relief work. His most memorable experience was during the Rohingya exodus from Rakhine in 2017–18, when he served as a voluntary nurse in an operating theatre in a field hospital, run jointly by the Finnish Red Cross and the Norwegian Red Cross in a Bangladeshi city bordering Myanmar. “It was challenging, as the field hospital was not in a traditional setting,” he recounts. “We had to perform surgery in tents and be innovative given the lack of medical equipment and supplies, like turning used and other potentially useful materials into medical equipment to help patients. Working with healthcare professionals from all over the world also required that we overcome cultural barriers in order to provide effective medical services.”
Like Brian, the other interviewees have made good use of their professional nursing knowledge in community work. Kelvin, who is engaged mainly in voluntary youth work these days, often leads courses and competitions related to nursing in secondary schools and shares his clinical experience with students. In addition to basic nursing knowledge, his background in mental health nursing comes in handy. “Students who suffer from insomnia or are upset by academic and family stress will call me for a chat or even write me long texts. This shows exactly how my profession is benefiting my voluntary work.”
For Queenie, the nursing profession took her community work to another level. She recalls leading a programme that served dementia patients with Primary 4 to 6 students at the beginning of her career. Before taking the students and their parents to a daycare centre for dementia patients — which felt not unlike a “three-generation family” setting — she educated the young participants about the condition, including the problems with language and memory faced by the patients and appropriate communication skills. “In the past, we would ask only general questions like 'Have you eaten? Are you feeling well? Are you getting enough sleep?' during home visits,” she explains. “But in this particular service programme, not only did we show the community's care for our older friends; the parents and children also learnt about dementia. Becoming a nurse allows us to use our professional knowledge and skills to engage in various types of voluntary work.”
While she has left frontline healthcare work to teach, her dedication and professionalism have earned her several awards, including the Gold Award in the Professional Volunteer Service Accreditation Programme and the Leadership Bauhinia Volunteer Award, both organised by the Agency for Volunteer Service. She was also named one of ten Hong Kong Professional and Elite Ladies by JCI City Lady. She sees such external recognition as an incentive for her to keep going. “The Leadership Bauhinia Volunteer Award left the greatest mark on me, as all my fellow awardees were professionals. I placed the trophy at a prominent spot at home to remind myself that using my professional knowledge in volunteering is as important as serving as a nurse,” says she.
For a while, Penry was of two minds as to whether to drop out of volunteering because of study stress. He sought advice from the teacher, Queenie. “I was spending quite a lot of time on voluntary youth development work, and my studies were equally demanding. I felt stressed and a bit lost,” he explains. To help him think it through, Queenie shared similar struggles she had gone through and analysed the pros and cons of staying and quitting for him. After some time, Penry figured it out. “Volunteering isn't only about giving. I also have a lot to take away from it. For example, I've developed better communication skills, and I can practise my nursing skills in the service sessions.” So, he decided to continue.
Penry's newfound insight is readily affirmed by his senior schoolmate, Kelvin, who speaks of an experience in his first months of work. “Less than a year after becoming a nurse, I came across a patient who fell unconscious. Fortunately, prior cardiopulmonary resuscitation experience as a volunteer gave me confidence to perform emergency first aid.” Volunteers do benefit from helping others.
At the heart of both nursing and volunteering is the common mission of spreading love. Queenie has a memorable experience many years ago that illustrates this spirit. During a scorching summer, she visited a blind older person living alone, whose only cooling device was a poorly functioning floor fan. While the problem could have been easily solved by buying a better one, she wanted to inspire more people to lend a helping hand. She invited people online to donate a used fan, and the result far exceeded her expectations. One person offered to send over a new fan although he had just given away his spare one. To her even greater surprise, when it arrived, her father, who had never been supportive of her voluntary work, volunteered to visit the older person with her, since Queenie did not know how to install a fan. “Dad thought I was busy enough as a nurse and couldn't understand why I was so occupied with voluntary work,” explains Queenie. “After that visit, he finally got it.”
Brian, who used to be on the frontline of relief work and now focuses on volunteer training, maintains that “even seemingly minor roles can make a big difference.” He goes on to elaborate, “I once helped an organisation build a first-aid bicycle team. Handling some of the many accidents that occur on cycle tracks on the spot can help reduce the burden of emergency services on the healthcare system.”
As the four HKMU nurses agree, serving the community requires more than a few individuals. What really matters is that more and more people become inspired to join their efforts, spreading love in every corner of the community.
Interviewees
Queenie Kwan Ching-man, Senior Lecturer, School of Nursing and Health Sciences; graduate of Bachelor of Nursing; student of Doctor of Clinical Science
Penry Lee Wai-nam, Year 3 student, Bachelor of Nursing with Honours in General Health Care
Kelvin So Yung-lung, graduate of Bachelor of Nursing with Honours in Mental Health Care
Brian Wong Kit, graduate of Bachelor of Nursing with Honours in General Health Care
