For more than seven years Longford nurse-turned-lobbyist Barb Baker has fought tirelessly - sometimes fruitlessly - for a hospice in Northern Tasmania. What keeps her going? JODIE STEPHENS reports.
WHEN the last patient at Philip Oakden Hospice died, Barb Baker got a phone call.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Mrs Baker would not return to the hospice the next morning as planned, the caller said. Instead, she and her co-workers would collect their things at the front office, and Philip Oakden would be closed.
It was an abrupt and "devastating" end to more than 13 years working at a place Mrs Baker said was like home, where staff gave patients and their families as good and as peaceful a death as possible.
Mrs Baker said Philip Oakden was free of the pressures and routine of a hospital, meaning an 11-year-old boy could die with his dog by his side, his black furry head poking out from under the covers. An elderly man could take a spa bath at midnight, or whenever he so pleased, and a young mother had a sandpit for her children to play in, and a tipple to enjoy with her husband at happy hour.
Visitors could come any time and stay as long as they wanted.
"It was a really happy place, and you probably find that hard to believe, but it was, and it was available to everyone," Mrs Baker said.
"It could be incredibly sad too, but you didn't have the stresses of a hospital setting."
Now, as chairwoman of Friends of the Northern Hospice, Mrs Baker hears stories from family members upset over how their loved ones died in the hospital system.
Gathering petition signatures last year, she heard of an elderly woman who died on a trolley in a hospital corridor, and of two siblings who had to say their goodbyes over their mother's body in a utility room, where staff would come and go to access the fridge.
Mrs Baker, with Friends of the Northern Hospice, has been fighting for a new facility ever since Philip Oakden was closed by aged care provider One Care in 2007.
"This group that was really only there to raise funds to support the hospice, was all of a sudden this lobby group, and it was all very foreign to us - we were nurses," Mrs Baker said.
Over more than seven years, and well into her retirement, Mrs Baker has been the face and voice of the sometimes hopeless campaign, holding public rallies and media events, hassling health ministers and bureaucrats, achieving small wins pre-election only to see promises broken, and now, setting up a foundation not unlike the one that sought community donations to help establish Philip Oakden in 1993.
She said it had been a "long, hard journey", and everyone involved was tired.
"There have been a few occasions where after we've met with someone - a politician, a health minister or one of the bureaucrats - and we've come away thinking, 'why are we doing this? Are we the only ones who have this passion?'," Mrs Baker said.
"But we have a cup of tea, and get back to it, basically.
"There are a lot of people behind us, and I feel a certain obligation to them, particularly to those who are getting towards the end of their life and they say to us, 'what are we going to do, where are we going to go?'."
The long-awaited launch of the Northern Hospice and Palliative Care Foundation later this week is likely to give some Tasmanians a sense of deja vu.
Dr Lach Hardy-Wilson, an obstetrician and gynaecologist, spearheaded the first campaign for Philip Oakden Hospice, and the community raised $200,000 before it opened in 1993.
"The service clubs were incredibly generous. They furnished rooms and they put in gardens and a gazebo, and then the Friends (of Philip Oakden Hospice) was established and we went and bought electric beds and fridges for the rooms and air conditioners, and that type of stuff," Mrs Baker said.
"And sadly there were things that had been donated by family members, some of the albums and the records, the paintings on the walls, that are just gone."
This time, Mrs Baker believes partnering with the state government for a hospice to be built within the grounds of Launceston General Hospital, will help assure its future and give the community confidence to donate.
"Even now, people often ask, 'what about all that money (you raised)?'," Mrs Baker said.
"And I think that's why we have been intent this time on getting something that belongs to the community, that can never be taken away again, it's just too hard."
The state government hasn't indicated support, but has committed $100,000 to a feasibility study into a facility.
Former health minister Michelle O'Byrne always maintained that palliative care was moving to a "hospice without walls" home care model.
But Mrs Baker said she was confident the study would find in favour of a hospice, and she would live to see a new facility in Launceston.
She said the campaign had occupied most of her waking and some sleeping hours, and she would be relieved when she could leave it behind.
"I've been chairman of the Friends a long time and we now have a constitution that says you're only allowed to be there for two years, but we've only just got that in," Mrs Baker said.
"So I'm looking forward to that day."
