In Focus: Dame Cicely Saunders Launch Event

Join the Florence Nightingale Museum at St Thomas' hospital for this celebratory event marking the launch of the latest exhibition in their In Focus series, devoted to the life and work of Dame Cicely Saunders.

Dame Cicely Saunders used her vast experience as a nurse, almoner and then a doctor, alongside her religious beliefs, to improve the lives of patients and their families who were living with terminal illness.

Starting with her time at the Nightingale Training School, she built up a wealth of knowledge about pain and caring for the terminally ill. Throughout her studies, paid work and voluntary commitments, her focus was always on the patients and relieving their symptoms.

This eventually led to her becoming a world-renowned expert on the care of the terminally ill. She helped to spread her work by inviting people from across the globe to see the hospice she had set up based on her life’s work and experience.

Dame Cicely founded St Christopher’s Hospice in south London in 1967. As the first hospice linking expert pain and symptom control, compassionate care, teaching and clinical research, it was (and still is) a pioneering institution that helped lead the modern hospice movement for holistic palliative care.

This timely exhibition celebrates the life and work of this incredible person, 20 years on from her death.

At the special launch preview evening, there will be short museum tours and a cash bar with a welcome drink included in the ticket price.

£5 from every ticket sold will go directly to St Christopher’s Hospice to allow them to continue their fantastic work.