Cicely Saunders
| Dame Cicely Saunders | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
22 June 1918 Barnet, Hertfordshire, England, UK |
| Died | 14 July 2005 (aged 87) South London, England, UK |
| Alma mater |
King's College London University of Oxford |
| Known for | Hospice care movement |
Dame Cicely Mary Saunders OM DBE FRCS FRCP FRCN (22 June 1918 – 14 July 2005) was an English Anglican nurse, social worker, physician and writer, involved with many international universities. She is best known for her role in the birth of the hospice movement, emphasising the importance of palliative care in modern medicine.
Saunders originally set out in 1938 to study politics, philosophy, and economics at St Anne's College, Oxford. In 1940, she set out to become a nurse and trained at Nightingale School of Nursing based at St Thomas's Hospital from 1940-44. Returning to St Anne's College after a back injury in 1944, she took a BA in 1945, qualifying as a medical social worker in 1947 and eventually trained as a doctor at St Thomas's Hospital Medical School (now merged to form King's College London GKT School of Medical Education) and qualified MBBS in 1957.
In 1948 she fell in love with a patient, David Tasma, a Polish-Jewish refugee who, having escaped from the Warsaw ghetto, worked as a waiter; he was dying of cancer. He bequeathed her £500 (equivalent to £13,106 in 2013) to be "a window in your home". [1] This donation, which helped germinate the idea which would become St Christopher's, is memorialized with a plain sheet of glass at the hospice's entrance. While training for social work, she holidayed with some Christians, and was converted to Christianity. In the late 1940s, Saunders began working part-time at St Luke's Home for the Dying Poor in Bayswater, and it was partly this which, in 1951, led her to begin study to become a physician.
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