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Dame Cicely Saunders

Nurse, social worker and doctor who opened St Christopher's Hospice in 1967 and established that pain in advanced cancer could be prevented with regular oral morphine and attention to the whole person.

Cicely Saunders (1918-2005) trained first as a nurse and then as a medical social worker before, at the suggestion of a surgeon, qualifying as a doctor in 1957 so that she would be listened to. Working at St Joseph's Hospice in Hackney, she showed that giving oral opioids by the clock rather than on demand kept patients with advanced cancer free of pain and alert, and she described total pain as physical, emotional, social and spiritual. In 1967 she opened St Christopher's Hospice in south London, the first to combine care, teaching and research, and it became the model for hospices and palliative care services worldwide. She was made a Dame in 1979 and received the Order of Merit in 1989. Palliative medicine became a recognised specialty in Britain in 1987 largely on the foundations she laid.

Role
Founder of the modern hospice movement
Specialisms
Palliative careHospiceCancer pain

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