Cicely Saunders - Success and Leadership
Cicely Saunders (1918-2005)
English founder of the modern hospice movement for dying people
She launched it in 1967 with the opening of St. Christopher’s Hospice in London.
Why was she a great leader and successful?
1. Vision and determination
a) her vision
Aged 38, she qualified as a doctor (pictured right), so that she could achieve her dream of
compassionate treatment for the dying and their loved ones.
She believed that dying should:
- be dignified and pain free (so that “constant pain needs
constant control”, she said).
b) her determination
She had to sell her ideas to an unbelieving medical profession through lots of presentations.
This didn’t come easily to her (she was naturally shy and had a lifelong back problem), but she was
determined to succeed.
2. Loving her customers (patients)
She did what her patients wanted and so always listened to them.
Her inspiration to set up St. Christopher’s Hospice came from her first love, a Polish Jew, David
Tasma (pictured right), who was dying of cancer.
He told her there were three things he wasn’t getting in hospital which she dedicated her life to achieving:
- psychological and philosophical help to die contentedly.
From these patient needs she developed the idea of “total pain” that includes spiritual
and emotional distress as well as physical pain.
She once asked a patient what he wanted most. “To understand me” was the reply.
3. Patience and perseverance
It took twenty years of planning and money raising to open St. Christopher’s from the time
of David Tasma’s death in 1948.
He gave her all be had (£500) for the hospice.
4. Lifelong learning
Saunders (pictured right as a young nurse) was a voracious reader but she learned most from her patients,
particularly about valuing life right up until death (which is why she
strongly opposed euthanasia).
One patient remarked:
“The trees are so beautiful. Did I really have to have a terminal illness to know how beautiful they are?”
5. Religion
She was:
- inspired by the belief that she was doing what God wanted.
6. Leadership
She was a great leader because she:
a) had a clear vision and purpose for St. Christopher’s (pictured right below)
(based upon the happiness of patients)
She clearly communicated this vision to all her employees.
b) valued the skills and values of employees
- because, she said:
“A hospice isn’t just a building – it’s an attitude”.
c) was a democratic autocrat
She told people what to do, but she always based her decisions on the advice of patients
and employees.
She was a great listener.
d) had the humility to accept her limitations and her dependence on other people
She believed that the enemy of success is the failure to challenge leaders' views.
Key quotes on
love
Life is all about learning to love.
Love is certainly as strong as death if not stronger.
Key quote on stress and
pain
Suffering is only intolerable when nobody cares.
Key quotes on
death
You matter because you are you, and you matter to the last moment of your life.
The last stages of life should not be seen as defeat but rather as life's fulfilment
We do best in life if we look at it with clear eyes, and I think that applies to coming up to death as well.
A society which shuns the dying must have an incomplete philosophy.
Key quotes on
success
There is a place for sheer bloody-mindedness; it does give you strength.
I think you achieve things by looking at what is possible, step by step.
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