Cicely Saunders

Dame Cicely Mary Strode Saunders (1918-2005) was an English nurse, medical social worker and physician who founded the modern hospice movement. Born in Hertfordshire, she trained as a nurse before qualifying in medical social work and then in medicine at St Thomas's Hospital Medical School in Oxford. In 1967 she opened St Christopher's Hospice in London, described as the world's first purpose-built hospice to combine clinical research and teaching with expert pain and symptom relief and holistic care for the physical, social, psychological and spiritual needs of dying patients. She introduced the concept of "total pain," a framework recognizing that a dying patient's suffering has physical, emotional, social and spiritual dimensions together, which reshaped how the medical profession approached terminal care and helped establish palliative medicine as its own specialized field. She was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1979 and won the Templeton Prize in 1981.