Science Hero: Dame Cecily Saunders

Dame Cicely Saunders was an Englishwoman who had a huge impact on our world.  She founded the modern hospice and started a worldwide movement to provide compassionate care for the dying. A nurse, social worker and doctor, she established new methods of pain control and a multi-faceted, holistic approach to care giving. This led to the development of a new medical specialty, palliative care, and the contemporary hospice.

"We have to concern ourselves with the quality of life as well as its length," Dame Cicely, as she was known affectionately in England, declared. This pioneering woman opened the first modern hospice in a residential suburb of London in 1967. Today, St. Christopher’s Hospice welcomes around 4,000 visitors annually and more than 50,000 health care professionals from all over the world visit and train there.
 
Her philosophy was simple., “You matter because you are you, and you matter to the last moment of your life."  Read more about her here..