Filipino domestic helper Lorna Sianen Pagaduan is keeping her fingers crossed that a recent Hong Kong policy change to tackle a chronic shortage of healthcare workers will let her practise nursing again.
She obtained her degree in the Philippines and worked as a registered nurse in a hospital there for two years. Just as she was preparing to go overseas to start working as a private nurse, her new employer died.
In a twist of fate and desperate to support her family, she ended up working as a domestic helper in Hong Kong.
After 27 years in the city, Pagaduan, 49, said the new rules offered hope that people like her might be able to take up nursing jobs.
Despite working as a helper, she has been president of the Filipino Nurses Association Hong Kong since 2006.
She set up the association to support other women like her and said some of its 150 members were qualified nurses or nursing graduates working as helpers.