Letting go of a loved one on the brink of death is hard. During Mdm Tan Sai Tin’s last days, the palliative care team at MWS Bethany Nursing Home–Choa Chu Kang faithfully attended to her needs.
While Mdm Tan wanted to leave peacefully, some members of her concerned and well-meaning family insisted on aggressive treatment to prolong her life as much as possible. Over a meeting initiated by MWS, the family came together at her bedside, expressed their love for one another and gained closure. Her family deeply appreciated this gesture.
“As an Asian family, we aren’t used to expressing our love,” said Mdm Tan’s niece, Wei Leng. “The bedside closure brought a sense of completion to her final journey. I hope more families will experience this too, because it was really, really special to us,” she added.
In providing professional care for our beneficiaries, MWS is constantly challenged by the deeper and more emotional aspects of our work. MWS’s holistic approach sees our beneficiaries as whole persons with different needs. Besides looking at presenting problems, we also provide psychosocial and emotional support, and spiritual care to work through deep-seated issues.
This approach is evident across MWS’s 20 centres and programmes. These provide care for families facing complex challenges, at-risk girls struggling to get back on track, people longing to get out of debt to build a brighter future for their children, socially isolated seniors looking for a warm community and the chronically ill hoping to live and leave in dignity.
During this trying period, while Singapore battles COVID-19 on the ground and the livelihoods of the most vulnerable are at stake, your financial support is more critical than ever.
“Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” (Phil 2:4)
Donate now so that MWS’s beneficiaries can continue receiving care beyond the ordinary in these difficult times.
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Credit: By the Methodist Welfare Services Communications (MWS) Communications Team / Photo courtesy of Methodist Welfare Services