Recently, Care Dimensions announced Stringer plans to retire later this year.

Stringer succeeded in growing the hospice despite the challenge it deals with the delicate and often uncomfortable issue of death and dying. The organization provides end-of-life care while also helping grieving families cope with loss. It allows someone to die at home, or in an inpatient setting, with dignity, instead of in a hospital, said Stringer.

Going into hospice care is not about the loss of hope, she said.

“It is about kind of reframing hope and helping people to have dignity, have control, be in the place and be surrounded by the things that are most important to them,” Stringer said.

The 62-year-old Gloucester resident was the third employee of the former Hospice of the North Shore, which started in 1978 as the second hospice in the state. When she began in 1989, there were just a couple of part-time employees and 40 volunteers. 

Stringer has grown the hospice, based at 75 Sylvan St., into one that employs 430 people, including nurses, hospice aides, social workers, chaplains and seven physicians.

Care Dimensions also has more than 400 volunteers, and cares for 700 patients a day throughout 90 communities in eastern Massachusetts. The scope of care would be the equivalent to a large hospital, except that most patients are being cared for at home.

The organization was a pioneer in its field, building the first licensed inpatient hospice facility in Massachusetts — the 20-bed Kaplan Family Hospice House at 78 Liberty St. in Danvers.

Read the entire Salem News article here.