Dame Cicely Saunders, founder of the modern hospice movement
- Cindy Crawford
- Aug 30
- 3 min read
The Hospice Movement started with one woman, Dame Cicely Saunders. A call to a higher purpose. She had to press through her own physical and emotional challenges. She had to level up her knowledge, as she must have been told repeatedly, “No one will listen to you unless you’re a physician.” The ones she witnessed abandoning the dying.
God gave her the strength to press through.
She is inspiring me to keep on. I stay close to her foundational work, “True Hospice,” and shy away from the Westernized model.
I was once told, “We will allot you 5-10 minutes with each GIP patient.” And those words still echo. The most complex and symptomatic issues, and my directive was not to spend time with the patient.
What about the young wildflower that was abandoned by a large hospital-based hospice 2 times? Or Chelsea, who was rejected by 5 different agencies and denied comfort care until the day she died? She begged for hospice. Can you imagine pleading for death with dignity? To have your complex end-of-life symptoms managed? Put yourself in their shoes. To be dismissed. Devalued. Even worse, told that you need Inpatient Psych. “Don’t you want to live?”
Someone has to take up the fight. God put them across my path for a reason.
Here is an excerpt about Dame Cicely Saunders.
A year later, during her work as an almoner at Archway Hospital, she cared for a dying 40-year-old Polish Jewish émigré called David Tasma. He felt that his life had been wasted. He had no relatives in England and only a handful of friends. In a brief and intense relationship—which probably amounted to a spiritual love affair—they discussed the idea that she might found a home for dying people to find peace in their final days. He left her £500, then a substantial sum, and the prophecy "I’ll be a window in your home." There is now a window dedicated to him at St Christopher’s; it is plain and has a view of the car park.
David Tasma’s death coincided with the death of Cicely Saunders’ father and that of a close friend, and she fell into a state of "pathological grief." She felt that, at last, she knew what God had called her to do, which was to build a home for dying people, where scientific knowledge should be combined with care and love. She supplemented her almoner work with being a volunteer sister at St Luke’s Hospital in north London.
Saunders sought closer contact with patients and asked her orthopaedic surgeon if she might work as a night nurse, which would put less strain on her back, since most of the lifting work is done by day staff. His opinion was that people wouldn’t listen to her as a nurse, that doctors desert the dying, and that she could best help dying patients by becoming a doctor. She was accepted as a medical student at St Thomas’ Hospital aged 33. Her father funded her studies.
Her fellow students made little effort to include her because she was much older. However, she impressed her teachers with her emotional maturity; one, Alex Paton, recalls her spending her free time reading to a patient who had suddenly become blind.
In 1958, shortly after she qualified, she wrote an article arguing for a new approach to the end of life. In it, she said, "It appears that many patients feel deserted by their doctors at the end. Ideally, the doctor should remain the centre of a team that works together to relieve where they cannot heal, to keep the patient’s own struggle within his compass and to bring hope and consolation to the end."
Excerpt taken from: theBMJ, "Dame Cicely Saunders, founder of the modern hospice movement, dies"
Good to hear of people like Mrs. Saunders caring for others with love and compassion!