Top: (From left) 3 Wishes Project donors and leadership Ronald Katz, Johnese Spisso and Madelyn Gordon. Middle: (From left) Dr. Peter Phung, patient family member Anita Amos and Dr. Thanh Neville. Bottom: The 3 Wishes Memory Tree. Photos: Jessie Cowan
To commemorate the first anniversary of the 3 Wishes Project, a reception was held on March 20, 2019, at the UCLA Meyer and Renee Luskin Conference Center for families served by the program and the donors and staff who made it possible. The program, launched in December 2017, fulfills wishes for patients who are in their final days or hours of life. The 3 Wishes Project has served more than 150 patients and has transformed the dying process into an opportunity to honor a patient’s wishes and autonomy, celebrate their life and create positive memories for families during final moments.
Johnese Spisso, president of UCLA Health, CEO of the UCLA Hospital System and associate vice chancellor of UCLA Health Sciences, gave the opening remarks and expressed her hope that the program will expand systemwide. She also recognized Ronald Katz, Jodi and Greg Perlman, Anne and Arnold Porath, Pamela and Robert Krupka and Vitas Healthcare for their philanthropy and continued support of the 3 Wishes Project. Co-founders Dr. Thanh Neville (MD ’05, RES ’08, FEL ’11) and Dr. Peter Phung reflected on how the program epitomizes patient-centered care and reminds them of why they chose their profession. “Being able to do nice things for patients and their families when medicine has reached its limits — this is a true privilege,” Dr. Neville said. Anita Amos, whose mother died in the Medical Intensive Care Unit (MICU) at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center last year, shared how the program gave her mother a peaceful, dignified death. Families of prior 3 Wishes patients remembered their loved ones by sharing memories on heart-shaped notecards, which will be memorialized as part of a Memory Tree in the MICU.
For more information, contact Lauren Davis at: 310-267-1844
