Cicely Saunders
St Christophers Hospice | |
---|---|
Spouse |
Marian Bohusz-Szyszko
(m. 1980; died 1995) |
Dame Cicely Mary Strode Saunders
Early life and education
Saunders was born in Barnet, Hertfordshire, to Philip Gordon Saunders, a chartered surveyor and landowner, and to Mary Christian Knight.[1] She had two younger brothers, John Frederick Stacey Saunders and Christopher Gordon Strode Saunders.[3]
After attending
Relationships
In 1948, Saunders fell in love with a patient, Ela Majer "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 £19,000 in 2021)[6] to be "a window in your home".[7] This donation, which helped germinate the idea that would become St Christopher's Hospice, Sydenham, London, 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.[8] 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 studying to become a physician.
Hospice
A year later, she began working at St Joseph's Hospice, a Catholic establishment in Hackney, East London, where she would remain for seven years, researching pain control. There she met a second Pole, Antoni Michniewicz, a patient with whom she fell in love. His death, in 1960, coincided with the death of Saunders's father in 1961, and another friend, and put her into what she later called a state of "pathological grieving".[8] But she had already decided to set up her own hospice, serving cancer patients, and said that Michniewicz's death had shown her that "as the body becomes weaker, so the spirit becomes stronger".[9]
Saunders said that after 11 years of thinking about the project, she had drawn up a comprehensive plan and sought finance after reading Psalm 37: "Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass." She succeeded in engaging the support of
In 1967,
She was, however, reluctant for St Christopher's to admit patients with
Saunders was an Anglican. In 1977, she was awarded an honorary Lambeth doctorate by the Archbishop of Canterbury. She later was made a Dame of the Order of St Gregory the Great (awarded by the Pope)[14]
In 1979, she was appointed
On 25 April 2005, another portrait of Saunders was unveiled at the
St Christopher's includes an arts team that provides art therapy, music therapy, drama therapy and community arts. The work of the arts team is reflected in two publications: End of Life Care: A Guide for Therapists, Artists and Arts Therapists and The Creative Arts in Palliative Care.[17][18]
Marriage
In 1963, three years after the death of Michniewicz, Saunders became familiar with the paintings of Marian Bohusz-Szyszko, a Polish émigré and professor with a degree in fine art. They met and became friends, and she became a patron of his art. A substantial amount of his work is hung at St Christopher's Hospice.
Bohusz-Szyszko had a long-estranged wife in
Charitable organisation
This section needs additional citations for verification. (May 2019) |
In 2002, Saunders co-founded a new charitable organisation, Cicely Saunders International, of which she was the founding trustee and president.[5] The charity's mission is to promote research to improve the care and treatment of all patients with progressive illness and to make high-quality palliative care available to everyone who needs it – hospice, hospital or home. The charity has co-created the world's first purpose built institute of palliative care – the Cicely Saunders Institute, and supported research to improve the management of symptoms such as breathlessness,[19] action to meet more closely patient and family choice in palliative care and better support for older people. Cicely Saunder's obituary in the Royal College of Physicians of London's Munk's Roll collection contains further information about her work with this organisation.[20]
Medical ethics
Saunders was instrumental in the history of UK medical ethics. She was an advisor to Andrew Mephem whose report led the Rev. Edward Shotter to set up the London Medical Group (LMG), a forerunner of the Society for the Study of Medical Ethics, later the Institute of Medical Ethics. She gave one of the first LMG lectures on the subject of pain, developing the talk into "The Nature and Management of Terminal pain" by 1972.[21]
This went on to be one of the most often repeated and requested lectures of the LMG and other such Medical Groups that sprung up around Great Britain, where it was often given as their inaugural lecture.[21] Her talk on the care of the dying patient was printed by the LMG in its series 'Documentation in Medical Ethics, a forerunner of the Journal of Medical Ethics.[22]
She strongly opposed voluntary euthanasia. This was partly because of her Christian faith, but she also argued that it is never needed, because effective pain control is always possible. She did, however, accept that both sides in the euthanasia debate were against unnecessary pain and the loss of personal dignity.[8]
Total pain
Saunders introduced the idea of "total pain", which included physical, emotional, social, and spiritual distress.[23][24][25][26][27]
Death
Saunders developed breast cancer but still continued to work. She died aged 87 in 2005 at St Christopher's Hospice.[28] To mark what would have been her 100th birthday, Google honoured her with a Google Doodle.[29]
Biography
She is the subject of a biography, Cicely Saunders: A Life and Legacy, published in 2018 to mark the 100th anniversary of her birth.
Honours
- Member of the Order of Merit (OM)[30]
- Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE)[30]
- Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons (FRCS)
- Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (FRCP)
- Fellow of the Royal College of Nursing (FRCN)
- Dame of the Order of St Gregory the Great (awarded by the Pope)[12]
See also
- Thelma Bates, the oncologist who established Britain's first hospital-based palliative care service and worked with Saunders
References
- ^ a b England & Wales, Civil Registration Birth Index, 1916–2007
- ^ England and Wales, Death Index, 1989–2018
- 1939 England and Wales Register
- ^ a b "Dame Cicely Saunders". St. Christopher's.
- ^ a b "Biography". Cicely Saunders International. Retrieved 9 May 2019.
- ^ England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1858–1995
- ^ "BBC Radio 4 – Desert Island Discs, Dame Cicely Saunders". Bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 19 December 2018.
- ^ a b c d e f "Dame Cicely Saunders, founder of the modern hospice movement, dies". British Medical Journal (obituary). 25 December 2016. Retrieved 18 June 2021.
- ^ "Dame Cicely Saunders, OM". The Telegraph. 15 July 2005. Retrieved 22 June 2018.
- PMID 12805195.
- S2CID 35472482.
- ^ a b "Work Life". Cicely Saunders International. Retrieved 9 May 2019.
- ^ • "St. Christopher's Hospice". Parliamentary Debates (Hansard). House of Commons. 19 February 1987. col. 1150–1151.
- ^ "Work Life". Cicely Saunders International. Retrieved 9 May 2019. [verification needed]
- ^ "National Portrait Gallery | What's on? | Dame Cicely Saunders". Archived from the original on 14 December 2005. Retrieved 16 July 2005.
- ISBN 978-0747565321
- ISBN 9780857003362.
- ISBN 9781846428029.
- ^ "King's College London - Breathlessness". www.kcl.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 9 May 2019. Retrieved 9 May 2019.
- ^ "Munks Roll Details for Cicely Mary Strode (Dame) Saunders". munksroll.rcplondon.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 30 May 2013. Retrieved 15 January 2019.
- ^ a b Reynolds, L.A., and E.M. Tansey, eds. Medical Ethics Education in Britain, 1963–1993. London: Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL Archived 25 March 2014 at the Wayback Machine (2007), pp. 8, 77, 118.
- ^ Saunders, Cicely. The Care of the Dying Patient and His Family; documentation in Medical Ethics, no. 5 (1975), published by the London Medical Group.
- PMC 1179787.
- PMID 15652434.
- PMID 11535742.
- ^ Clark, D (2000). "Total pain: the work of Cicely Saunders and the hospice movement". American Pain Society Bulletin. 10 (4): 13–15.
- ^ "A holistic approach to pain". Nursing Times. 23 August 2001.
- ^ Saxon, Wolfgang (31 July 2005). "Cicely Saunders Dies at 87; Reshaped End-of-Life Care". The New York Times. Retrieved 22 June 2018.
- ^ Evans, Natalie (22 June 2018). "Who was Dame Cicely Saunders? Google celebrates British pioneer of modern hospice movement". Daily Mirror. Retrieved 22 June 2018.
- ^ a b "Remembering Dame Cicely Saunders: Founder of Hospice". www.crossroadshospice.com. Retrieved 4 October 2020.
Further reading
- du Boulay, S (1984). Cicely Sanders: A life and legacy. London: Hodder and Staunton. ISBN 0-340-3510 3-9.
- Brown, G (2007). Courage: Eight Portraits. London: Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-0747565321.
- Clark, D (2018). Cicely Sanders: A life and legacy. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0190637934.
- Wood, J A (2021). Cicely Saunders and the legacies of ‘Total Pain’. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow. https://theses.gla.ac.uk/82450/