The life and work of dame cicely saunders – Half a century from the establishment of the first modern hospice

Abstract

© 2016, Serbian Medical Society. All rights reserved. Dame Cicely Saunders, a nurse, social worker and physician, was born on 1918 in Barnet, England. During her dedicated work, she was involved in the management of patients in the terminal stage of incurable illnesses. She saw how inadequate the care of these patients was, and pointed to the fact that little attention was paid to their different needs. Based on her insights, she incited worldwide changes in traditional medical and social attitudes about the care of dying patients. She founded the first modern hospice, St Christopher's Hospice, in the UK, which in addition to clinical care, combined teaching and research. She introduced the concept of “total pain”, and in this way changed lives of the severely ill. Cicely Saunders made a great contribution to the development of modern hospices and palliative care and was a pioneer of the modern hospice care movement. She died at St Christopher's Hospice in London in 2005.