St. Christopher's Hospice is a

hospice Hospice care is a type of health care that focuses on the palliation of a terminally ill patient's pain and symptoms and attending to their emotional and spiritual needs at the end of life. Hospice care prioritizes comfort and quality of life b ...

south London South London is the southern part of London, England, south of the River Thames. The region consists of the boroughs, in whole or in part, of Bexley, Bromley, Croydon, Greenwich, Kingston, Lambeth, Lewisham, Merton, Richmond, Southwark, Sut ...

, England, established in 1967 by

Cicely Saunders Dame Cicely Mary Strode Saunders (22 June 1918 – 14 July 2005) was an English nurse, social worker, physician and writer. She is noted for her work in terminal care research and her role in the birth of the hospice movement, emphasising the i ...

, whose work is considered the basis of modern hospice philosophy.

Legacy

Among the first staff at St. Christopher's was Florence Wald, who took Saunders' philosophies back to the United States to become the founder of the hospice movement in the United States.Rierden, And
"A Calling for Care Of the Terminally Ill"
''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', 19 April 1998; Accessed 5 February 2009 In 1971

Robert Twycross Robert Twycross (born 29 January 1941) is a retired British physician and writer. He was a pioneer of the hospice movement during the 1970s, when he helped palliative care gain recognition as an accepted field of modern medicine. Education and ...

was appointed as a Clinical Research Fellow by Saunders. During his tenure there, his studies on the effectiveness of

morphine Morphine is a strong opiate that is found naturally in opium, a dark brown resin in poppies ('' Papaver somniferum''). It is mainly used as a pain medication, and is also commonly used recreationally, or to make other illicit opioids. T ...

diamorphine Heroin, also known as diacetylmorphine and diamorphine among other names, is a potent opioid mainly used as a recreational drug for its euphoric effects. Medical grade diamorphine is used as a pure hydrochloride salt. Various white and brown ...

and

methadone Methadone, sold under the brand names Dolophine and Methadose among others, is a synthetic opioid agonist used for chronic pain and also for opioid dependence. It is used to treat chronic pain, and it is also used to treat addiction to heroi ...

helped standardize and simplify the management of cancer pain.25 Years in Palliative Medicine at Sir Michael Sobell House: A Festschrift for Robert Twycross, Radcliffe Medical Press, 2003; Szeloch H.,Hospice as a place of pastoral and palliative care over a badly ill person. Wyd. UKSW Warszawa 2012, ISSN 1895-3204.

Features

The hospice contains sculptures by the Polish artist Witold Gracjan Kawalec.

References

External links

Official site
Hospices in England Charities based in London Health in London 1967 establishments in England {{UK-hospital-stub