Creative handicrafts help patients restore confidence

Cheung Lai-ping
Patient Care Assistant II
Castle Peak Hospital

These beautiful paper-scrolling decorations and other creative handicrafts are the secret weapon to help psychiatric patients restore their confidence, and the crafting hand of this weapon is Patient Care Assistant II Cheung Lai-ping. She is one of the outstanding staff awardee this year who started working for the Hospital Authority in 2007 and joined Castle Peak Hospital to help promote occupational therapy activities in 2010, where she teaches patients handicraft to boost their self-confidence. “It isn’t our concern whether the handicrafts are pleasing to the eyes; our focus is helping patients restore their confidence.”

She recalls, “I remember an 18-year-old female patient of anorexia who was introverted and unconfident. She especially caught my attention because she’s of the same age as my own daughter. I talked to her a lot about everything and then she slowly opened up to me. We became good friends afterwards. Later, her conditions got better and she was transferred to another hospital. One day, I received a thank you letter from her, telling me that she is now living a happy and confident life and that she wanted to thank me for the encouragement. Just these few words were already enough to make me happy for a long time. It’s so heartening to be able to help our patients!”

Lai-ping was not familiar with handicraft until she took up this post, when she started to equip herself by attending handicraft courses, such as paper-scrolling and DIY greeting cards. She also researches on the Internet or asks around to gather more relevant information.

In the eyes of colleagues, Lai-ping is full of positive energy and willing to take challenges and complete tasks. Even patients in bad-temper or the opinionated colleagues will become gentle and cooperative in front of her, “I honestly don’t have any special skills to calm them down, maybe it’s just my constant smile and readiness to listen to their heartfelt feelings!”

Lai-ping’s considerate working attitude attracts everyone – colleagues love to work with her and patients enjoy talking to her!