In an age when hospice care was not widespread, Barbara Eastwood Meyer ’58, was there to help lead the way.
By Maddie Scharrer
Just 60 years ago, the health care landscape looked extremely different. Medical treatment was more about treating disease than caring for the whole person, meaning the needs of terminally ill patients went unsatisfied. Loved ones nearing the end of life would be taken to hospitals and nursing homes, where providers could care for them medically, but were often unable to dedicate time providing the compassion-based care these patients longed for and deserved. All of that changed in 1963 when Dame Cicely Saunders, an English nurse, introduced the first seeds of hospice and palliative care.
Saunders believed patients preparing for death needed a more compassionate approach. Her idea quickly gained popularity and served as a model others could visit and follow. In 1974, a few years after Saunders presented her vision, the first U.S. hospice opened in Connecticut. In 1977, Green Bay’s Bellin Hospice became the nation’s third, and Wisconsin’s first, hospice program.
In the early 1980s, Barbara “Barb” Eastwood Meyer ’58, also began noticing terminally ill patients needed more unhurried, personally comforting care. She was at the forefront of organizing home-based hospice care in rural Wisconsin. As a nurse educator in a northwoods village, Meyer emulated the Wisconsin Idea: sharing her learning to inspire her community to act. Together, a small group of dedicated volunteers organized a new health care nonprofit that would enhance families’ lives right up to the end.
“I became aware, as did others, that residents who were terminally ill often needed more time spent with them to discuss what they were experiencing, what their hopes and wishes were, and some of them had unfinished business they wanted to go home to take care of.” —Barb Meyer
Meyer came from a dairy farm family in Wiota, Lafayette County, WI. During her final year at the UW–Madison School of Nursing, she worked as a staff nurse at University Hospital and met her future husband, John Meyer, a young vicar at Calvary Lutheran Chapel on campus. Upon her graduation in January 1958, she worked as an assistant instructor of medical nursing and a part-time staff nurse until she became pregnant with her first child. Between 1959 and 1971, Barb and John had eight children. While she was away from practice, she made sure that her nursing skills were never forgotten, noting, “There were many occasions in the raising of our family of eight children when I made use of my nursing skills and education.”
Once her youngest child reached school age, Meyer returned to nursing practice. She became a licensed EMT and worked with the local volunteer ambulance service. She also began working part-time at the Golden Age Home (now called Rib Lake Health Services), a nursing home in Rib Lake, Wisconsin. There, she was an active leader, teaching nursing assistant classes, conducting nursing staff orientation, and serving as the in-service coordinator. Her strong involvement in the nursing home allowed her to pick up on the struggles patients were facing.
“I became aware, as did others, that residents who were terminally ill often needed more time spent with them to discuss what they were experiencing, what their hopes and wishes were, and some of them had unfinished business they wanted to go home to take care of,” Meyer said.
Meyer first learned about hospice while doing research as she prepared a staff in-service focused on improving the care of the dying. Inspired by what she’d learned about hospice care and how it embraced a new model of compassionate end-of-life care, Meyer led her colleagues and equally impassioned community members in working toward forming their own home-based hospice care program. Getting this dream project started was no easy task. In the early 1980s, hospice care was new, and pretty much nonexistent in rural areas.
“We wanted to have control over our entire program and offer the excellent care our patients needed, rather than be owned by a home health agency or a hospital. We never regretted that decision.” —Barb Meyer
The Rib Lake group led by Meyer started researching the process by reaching out to other health care pioneers. “We visited other hospices and attended a meeting of the Hospice Organization of Wisconsin. We purchased literature on starting a hospice program from the National Hospice Organization so that we had a format to follow,” Meyer said.
“We continued to educate ourselves and the public about hospice care, and spoke to community organizations about our program plans,” Meyer said. They hosted meetings to gauge the community’s interest in implementing a hospice program, and the consensus was that specialized end-of-life care was needed.
Along with gaining community approval, Meyer and her team needed a collaborating physician to make their work legitimate in the health care community. A supportive Taylor County doctor stepped up, and the team got the ball rolling.
Meyer and her team spent many hours negotiating bureaucratic and financial hurdles toward legal recognition of their home-based hospice program. “Seeking information on the governmental regulations for starting a hospice was no easy task. Answers were hard to find, and often conflicting.” After three years and mountains of paperwork done at the kitchen table, the organizing team finally incorporated Hope Hospice in March, 1985, as an independent, nonprofit health care provider complete with a board of directors who made Meyer the program’s first director. A month later, Hope Hospice Inc. became a member of the National Hospice Organization (NHO), which had been established only a handful of years earlier in 1978. Their membership was specifically for being a “hospice in the process of establishing a plan,” according to Meyer. This affiliation gave Meyer’s organization even more validity and attracted volunteers.
“Knowing how frightened I was when the surgeon gave me his opinion [on my breast cancer] helped me to empathize with our hospice patients and their families, and to help them in their whole time in our care.” — Barb Meyer
Hope Hospice, Inc. accepted their first home care patient in July 1985. Under Meyer’s guidance, the program grew tremendously, adjusting to evolving regulations which allowed the program to expand. As the hospice program grew and staff formed over the next few months, it was all-hands-on-deck. Those involved dedicated their time to the program solely for the sake of getting it started. “In the initial months, funding was provided by corporation membership dues, donations, memorials, fund raising projects, and United Way support,” Meyer explained. “All time and labor spent in the planning of the program up until the acceptance of the first hospice patient was voluntary and unpaid.” In 1988, a contract with Marshfield Hospital for inpatient care allowed the hospice to become Medicare Certified. In 1992, when Wisconsin’s licensure of hospice rules went into effect, Hope Hospice Inc. was right there, qualifying as a licensed Wisconsin hospice program. In all aspects, Rib Lake’s locally organized nonprofit hospice program was a trailblazer at the forefront of hospice care.
Around this triumphant time for the Hope Hospice team, Meyer faced a personal health struggle. In the spring of 1985, after listening to a Wisconsin Public Radio program about breast cancer, she decided to conduct her first-ever breast self-exam. To her surprise, she discovered a small lump that turned out to be cancerous. Her doctors wasted no time in scheduling surgery, and she was relieved to learn that the cancer had not spread. That emotional experience provided her with some perspective of how vulnerable it is to be a patient.
“Knowing how frightened I was when the surgeon gave me his opinion helped me to empathize with our hospice patients and their families, and to help them in their whole time in our care,” Meyer said. “Having gone through that experience helped me fully understand how deeply it affects not only the patient, but all his loved ones too.”
As Meyer’s understanding and knowledge of hospice care grew, so did the reach of their services as the organization expanded to “serve all of Taylor County plus a 30-mile radius of Rib Lake for home care,” along with an unlimited inpatient receiving area.
As Meyer helped Hope Hospice, Inc. grow over the years, one virtue always remained true for her and the team. “We wanted to remain an independent hospice,” she said. “We wanted to have control over our entire program and offer the excellent care our patients needed, rather than be owned by a home health agency or a hospital. We never regretted that decision.” She stayed in the director’s position at Hope Hospice for 15 years, until her retirement in 2000. The vision of hospice Barbara Meyer inspired her nursing home colleagues to act on became a well-established organization that continues to help countless families.
Now known as Hope Hospice & Palliative Care, Inc. the program is based in Medford, WI, and serves people in seven northern Wisconsin counties. Its staff supports those in need through nursing care, volunteer services, social support, spiritual services, grief and loss support, as well as specialized hospice and palliative care for veterans. This work is the definition of compassionate care.
Meyer is thankful for her own life experiences that she says helped her foster this passion and understanding for those in need. “I believe being a mother, experiencing all that that entailed, helped my understanding of others, and thus made me a better hospice caregiver. I also believe that my having had breast cancer about the time our youngest was in their early teens influenced me to be more compassionate and understanding of some of what people in hospice care face,” Meyer said.
Sadly, Barbara Eastwood Meyer died in May 2024, a few months after being interviewed for this article. She was 89. In Barb’s final hours, her family surrounded her with their loving voices, caring for her like she’d always cared for them. Her legacy as an alum of the UW–Madison School of Nursing lives on in the many lives she changed and the trail she blazed for home hospice care in Wisconsin.