19 Facts About Cicely Saunders

Dame Cicely Mary Strode Saunders was an English nurse, social worker, physician and writer.

Cicely Saunders is noted for her work in terminal care research and her role in the birth of the hospice movement, emphasising the importance of palliative care in modern medicine, and opposing the legalisation of voluntary euthanasia.

Cicely Saunders had two younger brothers, John Frederick Stacey Saunders and Christopher Gordon Strode Saunders.

In 1948, Cicely 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.

In 1965, Cicely Saunders was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire.

Cicely Saunders was reluctant for St Christopher's to admit patients with AIDS in the years after the syndrome first emerged.

Cicely Saunders later was made a Dame of the Order of St Gregory the Great.

On 25 April 2005, another portrait of Cicely Saunders was unveiled at the National Portrait Gallery.

Cicely Saunders was one of the subjects of Prime Minister Gordon Brown's book: Courage: Eight Portraits.

Cicely Saunders was a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, a Fellow of the Royal College of Nursing and a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons.

In 1963, three years after the death of Michniewicz, Cicely Saunders became familiar with the paintings of Marian Bohusz-Szyszko, a Polish emigre and professor with a degree in fine art.

Cicely Saunders was instrumental in the history of UK medical ethics.

Cicely Saunders was an advisor to Andrew Mephem whose report led the Rev Edward Shotter to set up the London Medical Group, a forerunner of the Society for the Study of Medical Ethics, later the Institute of Medical Ethics.

Cicely Saunders 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.

Cicely Saunders's 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.

Cicely Saunders did accept that both sides in the euthanasia debate were against unnecessary pain and the loss of personal dignity.

Cicely Saunders introduced the idea of "total pain", which included physical, emotional, social, and spiritual distress.

Cicely Saunders died aged 87 in 2005 at St Christopher's Hospice.

Cicely Saunders is the subject of a biography, Cicely Saunders: A Life and Legacy, published in 2018 to mark the 100th anniversary of her birth, and of the biographical novel Di cosa e fatta la speranza.