As a man of faith, Dr. Jim Boal knows there is something to be said for following one’s path in life. Sometimes it’s less about striving for some glorious achievement, and more about humbly accepting an invitation. A door opens, and you step through it.
When Dr. Boal was a senior in medical school, he knew he had an interest in hospice. He assumed it would be something he could do on the side. In fact, while he was still in medical school, he and a buddy started picking up shifts at Angela Hospice, just hoping to make some extra money in their spare time. Eventually they started managing all the off hours, weekends, and holidays.
“At that time, most hospice doctors had gotten fed up with something else or were retired. In fact, most of the gentlemen that were working here before me were retired or near retirement,” Dr. Boal explained. “It wasn’t a full-time career for most people.”
Dr. Boal had studied to become a family medicine physician, but finding work wasn’t as easy as he’d imagined.
“When I was graduating, medical jobs around here were scarce,” he said. “So I ended up asking Sister Giovanni for a full time job. She gave it to me, and I haven’t looked back.”
“I’ll just thank Sister Giovanni for making a curious decision…. that was a decision she made that radically changed my life.”
Hospice was relatively new at the time. There was no real road map for Dr. Boal to follow as a hospice medical director, and hiring him was a leap of faith for Sister Giovanni, Angela Hospice’s founder, as well.
“I had to make my own job,” he explained. “It established a new role here when I came in that really built over time.”
And just as the number of families Angela Hospice served grew—from a daily census of 69 patients in 2000, to between 250-300 today—the medical team grew as well.
“Now there’s myself, Dr. Mack, both full time; we have Dr. Tremonti as pediatric/palliative care; five nurse practitioners working full and part time.”
While the hospice industry as a whole has changed a great deal from a regulatory and business standpoint over Dr. Boal’s 25-year tenure at Angela Hospice, the core of the hospice philosophy remains rooted in compassionate care for patients and families – especially at Angela where, Dr. Boal said, the team still carries “the vision that Sister Giovanni set almost forty years ago.”
“Our focus is really: how much can we do to take the burden off people at the end of life. If you’re here, you’re here to help others,” he said. “It’s a very hard time of life for people and their families who are dying. Trying to make that the best possible experience in a horrible time is what we’re about.”
For Dr. Boal, the best part of his job is visiting patients in their homes, where they feel most comfortable and at ease. He loves to be able to help people through genuine, human-to-human connection.
Having spent 25 years helping Angela Hospice to grow, Dr. Boal hopes to see Angela Hospice continue to build on its strengths, while staying true to its identity as a Felician-sponsored ministry.
“We’re one of the few places that has managed to keep a functional Care Center over the years,” he said. “I would love to see us be able to continue what we do, spread it out, and show that we can do it well, and as a not-for-profit.”
In terms of its role in the health care system, Dr. Boal believes hospice is here to stay.
“If you know that you’re dying, it’s the place to come. It’s a scary thing. People don’t want to do it. They want to put it off. But it’s something that we will all have to face at some point, that we all die in some form. And if you have the choice on how to die, of the options available, hospice is inevitably the best choice.”
