Lean On Me
BY IVAN MOORE
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Lean on Me
Barbara Tognoli, executive director of Hospice of San Joaquin, stands in the foyer of Hospice House. First-time visitors to the residential care facility, situated behind Hospice’s administrative offices on Pacific Avenue, won’t find ominous sterility, but warmth and welcome.
Today, smiling staff members greet Tognoli as she visits with Hospice volunteer coordinator Becky Freeman, who’s carrying a stack of quilts donated from a local quilting circle.
Even with the staff’s activity, there’s stillness here, but it’s not disquieting.
Nurses and aides are preparing for the arrival of two new patients – the house has facilities capable of caring for six at a time, augmenting Hospice’s program of in-home services for about 1200 families a year.
Tognoli calls Hospice “my cathedral,” and she doesn’t use the term lightly.
The New York native spent 15 years in a monastery.
“Prayer, silence and manual labor enveloped my body and spirit,” she said later of the experience.
It was during her 15 years of cloistered life, Tognoli says, that she gained the values and sense of holism that guide her actions to this day.
In the late 1970s a group of San Joaquin residents – including representatives from the healthcare community, some social workers, and clergy members – recognized in the community a need for organized, coordinated care for the dying.
“They believed in the dignity of the human being, and that there should be special care in the time of dying,” explains Tognoli.
Two years after moving to Stockton in 1979 with her husband Ron, Tognoli spotted a classified ad in the newspaper that read, “new healthcare agency is seeking a director.”
She had no medical training, no experience in healthcare. After leaving the monastery, she earned a master’s degree in education and administrative skills that she had honed as a community organizer in the Bronx, and as an educational program coordinator for various Catholic parishes.
The “healthcare agency” seeking an administrative helmsman turned out to be the beginnings of Hospice of San Joaquin, and for Tognoli, its mission fit perfectly with her own value system and skill set. She applied for the job, got it, and has worked as the administrative head ever since.
In the early days of Hospice, Tognoli explains, hospice care as it exists today was a new idea in the healthcare world. Before the advent of community hospices in the 1970s, terminally ill patients whose conditions no longer responded to aggressive treatment had limited options when it came to facing death.
“They could leave the hospital and have a few visits from home healthcare, or they would be kept in the hospital until they died, strung up on equipment, away from their family,” says Tognoli.
The Hospice’s offices had humble beginnings in a storage room in the old Delta Blood Bank building, later moving to other temporary spaces before opening the doors of its current location on Pacific Avenue in 2004, across from Morris Chapel and neighboring the Central United Methodist Church.
The Pacific Avenue campus was designed and built – under Tognoli’s supervision – from the ground up for the specific purpose of hospice operations. It contains Hospice’s administrative offices, as well as the Hospice House.
The non-profit organization accepts Medicare recipients, and otherwise relies on contributions from the community to pay for operation costs.
Hospice of San Joaquin, she says, offers the families of patients the support they need to care for their loved ones with dignity at home during the stages of dying – all at no cost.
“Helping people die seems to be what people think about when they think about us,” says Tognoli. “I believe we’ve also done a great job of helping people live.”
Today, smiling staff members greet Tognoli as she visits with Hospice volunteer coordinator Becky Freeman, who’s carrying a stack of quilts donated from a local quilting circle.
Even with the staff’s activity, there’s stillness here, but it’s not disquieting.
Nurses and aides are preparing for the arrival of two new patients – the house has facilities capable of caring for six at a time, augmenting Hospice’s program of in-home services for about 1200 families a year.
Tognoli calls Hospice “my cathedral,” and she doesn’t use the term lightly.
The New York native spent 15 years in a monastery.
“Prayer, silence and manual labor enveloped my body and spirit,” she said later of the experience.
It was during her 15 years of cloistered life, Tognoli says, that she gained the values and sense of holism that guide her actions to this day.
In the late 1970s a group of San Joaquin residents – including representatives from the healthcare community, some social workers, and clergy members – recognized in the community a need for organized, coordinated care for the dying.
“They believed in the dignity of the human being, and that there should be special care in the time of dying,” explains Tognoli.
Two years after moving to Stockton in 1979 with her husband Ron, Tognoli spotted a classified ad in the newspaper that read, “new healthcare agency is seeking a director.”
She had no medical training, no experience in healthcare. After leaving the monastery, she earned a master’s degree in education and administrative skills that she had honed as a community organizer in the Bronx, and as an educational program coordinator for various Catholic parishes.
The “healthcare agency” seeking an administrative helmsman turned out to be the beginnings of Hospice of San Joaquin, and for Tognoli, its mission fit perfectly with her own value system and skill set. She applied for the job, got it, and has worked as the administrative head ever since.
In the early days of Hospice, Tognoli explains, hospice care as it exists today was a new idea in the healthcare world. Before the advent of community hospices in the 1970s, terminally ill patients whose conditions no longer responded to aggressive treatment had limited options when it came to facing death.
“They could leave the hospital and have a few visits from home healthcare, or they would be kept in the hospital until they died, strung up on equipment, away from their family,” says Tognoli.
The Hospice’s offices had humble beginnings in a storage room in the old Delta Blood Bank building, later moving to other temporary spaces before opening the doors of its current location on Pacific Avenue in 2004, across from Morris Chapel and neighboring the Central United Methodist Church.
The Pacific Avenue campus was designed and built – under Tognoli’s supervision – from the ground up for the specific purpose of hospice operations. It contains Hospice’s administrative offices, as well as the Hospice House.
The non-profit organization accepts Medicare recipients, and otherwise relies on contributions from the community to pay for operation costs.
Hospice of San Joaquin, she says, offers the families of patients the support they need to care for their loved ones with dignity at home during the stages of dying – all at no cost.
“Helping people die seems to be what people think about when they think about us,” says Tognoli. “I believe we’ve also done a great job of helping people live.”