Message From Our Student: A single wish granted goes a long way

By Ashley Ko, Class of 2025

To many of us, having a wish come true may seem like an illusory belief. After all, wishes are subjective experiences that cannot be defined in dosages and formulations and administered to patients who are ill, with an expectation that they will recover.

However, for some children with critical illnesses, having a wish come true may mean the world to them. It may represent the hope they have in treating their condition, and having their wish granted may make them realise that their dreams can come true, giving them renewed hope and strength to walk the long and arduous journey as they undergo treatment. The Wish Effect, or Wish Impact, as Make A Wish Foundation calls it, has a lasting, life-changing impact on children with critical illnesses and everyone around them.

The Make A Wish committee (from left to right): (front row) Kvan Yam, Ashley Ko and Anne Chui and (second row) Jane Poh, Darren Chong and Colin Goh

It is with this belief that LKCMedicine’s Make A Wish Local Community Involvement Programme (LCIP) was created. As medical students and future doctors, we strive to understand medicine from a different perspective aside from the medications and prescriptions – to uplift the patient and create the ideal state of mind for young patients, like the ones Make A Wish Foundation Singapore is serving.

We also hope to give more MBBS students opportunities to be Wish Granters, which will allow them to explore and understand first-hand what living with a critical illness is like and some of the challenges these children may face. 

The Wish Journey describes the process each child goes through with Wish Granters from Make A Wish Foundation Singapore, from capturing their most cherished wish to the anticipation leading up to their wish coming true. It begins with wish capturing, when Wish Granters visit the children to get to know them and truly understand the crux of their greatest wish. They carefully curate each Wish Journey to create an experience each child can call their own. This is followed by the Wish Design stage, where Wish Granters design and plan an extraordinary experience for the children based on their most cherished wish. 

Each child is taken on a journey designed to build excitement and anticipation for their final Wish Realisation. This empowers the child to be actively involved in the creation of their wish, providing distraction from their illness or medical treatments. The child gets to experience their greatest wish come true and form core memories.

We also expect to work together to plan, execute and participate in other activities with the main aim of raising awareness of Make A Wish Foundation Singapore’s efforts in Wish Granting amongst the local healthcare community.

We are currently planning an event to concomitantly raise funds for future events and for Make A Wish Foundation Singapore. We just wrapped up a successful donation drive, where we received many valuable items that will be donated to the charity and eventually given to the children they work with as an ice-breaker gift during the Wish Granter’s first visit with them.

Some of the donated items from Make A Wish’s recent donation drive 

Despite being a small LCIP in LKCMedicine, we have big plans of expanding to other medical schools in the future, to further spread the word about the efforts of Make A Wish Foundation Singapore and share the Wish Effect with the healthcare community in Singapore. We hope that you will lend us your support and join us on this journey!

To learn more about Make A Wish Foundation Singapore, please visit their website.