Ignite paediatric patients’ simple but great dreams

Dreams*2Gather (Paediatrics)
Queen Elizabeth Hospital

Young people are passionate about their dreams. However, dreams seem unattainable or even unimaginable to adolescents with serious illnesses or special physical needs.

The Adolescent Medical Centre of Queen Elizabeth Hospital continued the ‘Together*DreamsComeTrue’ programme under the theme ‘Dreams*2Gather’, matching each injured or disabled teenager with two volunteers to fulfill their dreams and reignite their passion for life. Throughout the past 12 years, it has helped them achieve a variety of simple but big dreams: Girls with cerebral palsy put on a wedding dress to record their beautiful moments in life; a child said a final goodbye to his deceased younger brother in a reunion by artificial intelligence and virtual reality technology; an adolescent with a colostomy who had been living in a Residential Care Home for a long time, enjoyed his first staycation in a hotel; a girl who had been living in hospital until the age of six, mustered up the courage to step out of her comfort ‘home’.

“Their dreams can reignite the energy of life, making them willing to take one step further for chasing their dreams,” the Team says. The programme not only helps dream-seekers realise that their illness should not dominate their entire life, but also allows medical staff and volunteers to understand the patients’ daily difficulties more. Through the participation of volunteers, the concept of caregiving is also extended to the community.

With imagination and action, dreams are not far away. In the coming projects, the Team is planning to help a hearing-impaired person who has just received a cochlear implant to talk to her deceased mother with the latest technology. The Team is also assisting a teenager with a terminal illness to leave behind images of himself to create a digital twin. In the future, his family will have the chance to interact with his virtual representation and recall the time they spent together, making up for the regrets brought by the disease.

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