By BVH Community Engagement Team

The Respect Ward of Bright Vision Hospital was filled with music and songs on 20 July 2011 afternoon, courtesy of a musical entertainment session by a group of Nanyang Polytechnic (NYP) Community Service Club (CSC) students.

The students have committed to providing regular musical entertainment to cheer up patients at Bright Vision Hospital as part of their programme of co-curricular activities (CCA). It is an excellent and fresh idea of theirs to bring in different types of NYP arts performance groups for their weekly visits. In preparation, they visited the hospital in April to understand the patients’ need, and went through the volunteer orientation programme on 25 June 2011.

For the first session, the students brought in the NYP guitarist group. All the 14 young students were shy as it was their first time interacting with patients. The staff encouraged the students and helped them along in coordinating the performance and interacting with patients. The guitarists provided group or solo performances depending on the types of patients in each section of the Respect Ward.. The performance covered classical music and some pop songs from Lady Gaga.

The session went smoother as the students gained more confidence. Some patients clapped along when the students performed, while the other patients appreciated the music performance quietly in their own way with students providing company at their bedside.

At the end of the session, the students developed a level of affiliation with the patients. An elderly lady patient thanked the students for making such a great effort to visit her. That was a great encouragement as the students thought what they had done was insignificant. Another Indian lady patient whose family members rarely visit her, smiled happily as she “adopted” six of the young students as her grandchildren, who promised to visit her regularly.