“I always ask myself: at the age of 80, would I regret not having done this? If the answer is yes, I will do it without hesitation.”
WONG Shuk Han
School of Nursing and Health Studies · Physiotherapy · Year 1
Wong Shuk Han was once in the Hong Kong Taekwondo Team and fought in international tournaments. She worked full-time for one year after retiring from the Team, and now she is an undergraduate at HKMU studying Physiotherapy for her second degree.
“After obtaining my first Bachelor’s Degree in 2017, I received a job offer from a company as well as an invitation to join the Hong Kong National Taekwondo Team. I was suggested to concentrate on either option, so I chose to be a full-time athlete.”
Five years on and she is now back in the academia. “At the beginning, I was not at all ready to be a student again. It took me a whole semester to catch up.” But she soon took a fancy to this new chapter of life. “We are a small class, so the bonds between us are especially strong.” Physical contact is inevitable in physiotherapy. “We practised palpation skills on each other. Many of us felt awkward at first. But we soon got used to it.”
This summer, she went with the Hong Kong Para-athletic Team to the World Boccia Cup in Povoa, Portugal to provide assistance to one of the para-athletes. “The athlete is entirely dependent on others for care. I needed to take care of her quotidian needs, including bathing her, brushing her teeth and washing her face. Transferring her from and to the wheelchair was unexpectedly tough. It was my first time tending to an actual patient! Luckily there was a professional physiotherapist in the Team from whom I learnt a lot. I kept asking questions throughout the trip.”
She is still deciding on her specialisation. “I might focus on sports physiotherapy, for I was an athlete and know what sportspeople need. Paediatric physiotherapy intrigues me too as it is as challenging as it is meaningful.”
