Healing the Souls of Patients with Psychospiritual Illness

Ms Joyce Tsui Yuk-ying is a retired nurse. She has served in the public hospitals for nearly three decades. During the period in which she assumed the roles of healthcare workers and hospital chaplain, she had first-hand contacts with many elderly and severely-ill patients, gaining deep insights into the huge physical pains of the patients as well as the enormous pressure sustained by themselves and their family members. In particular, there has always been a severe lacking in community support after the patients have been discharged from the hospital, causing many negative emotional feeling for them. Consequently, Ms Tsui hopes that she can leverage on her personal professional knowledge and handson experiences to help the patients and their family members heal their souls, letting them to feel the warmth and concerns when they are fighting against the illnesses.

In view of the huge demands and urgency to put in place a community support service for the discharged patients (especially the elderly and patients with chronic disease), Ms Tsui made a bold decision to retire early. In 2010, she founded Love & Care for the Sick Foundation. She is deeply engaged to provide healthrelated supporting care for the patients and concerns for the needs of their family members in the “physical, psychological, social and spiritual” aspects. One of the key services of the foundation is to gather a group of retired nurses to voluntarily offer home visits people with chronic disease, singleton elderly or left-behind elderly, to provide them with home safety assessment, health guidance, escorting service for medical consultation and treatment, etc. In addition, Ms Tsui also led a group of volunteers to provide psychological and spiritual support for the patients and their family members, assisting them to proactively face the illnesses and maintain family harmony.

Accompanying Patients to the End of Their Lives

Though Ms Tsui was retired, she did not just rest at home. She manifested selfless love and concerns for her patients and even to the extent of providing care for those dying elderly who were either helpless or without family support. In addition to personally handle each individual case by herself, she also stepped up to the plate to shoulder the responsibility of daily accompaniment, chatting, escorting for medical treatment, etc. until the passing of the elderly, letting them feel that life is still full of love and hope, so that they are no longer feeling lonely, painful, helpless and regretted. Additionally, she was also involved in the funeral arrangement of the passing elderly, restoring their dignity to complete the final journey of their lives.

To pass on the humanitarian spirit of caring for patients, Ms Tsui has been constantly striving to conduct courses related to spiritual and pastoral education, hoping to impart her years of accumulated experiences in nursing care and patient services as well as the essence of spiritual therapy, allowing more people to receive appropriate assistance for their physical and psycho-spiritual needs.

Check this link for the humanitarian work of Ms Joyce Tsui Yuk-ying.