St Christophers Hospice

Name :

St Christophers Hospice

Address  :

51-59 Lawrie Park Road

Town  :

London

State  :

Greater London

Country  :

UK

Post Code:

SE26 6DZ

Phone  :

020 8768 4500

Fax  :

020 8659 8680

Web URL  :

Available

Email  :

info@stchristophers.org.uk

Description

About St Christophers Hospice End of Life Care and Education
Dame Cicely Saunders founded St Christophers in 1967 as the first hospice to link expert pain and symptom control compassionate care education and clinical research St Christophers has been a pioneer in the field of palliative medicine which is now established worldwide Everyone is welcome at St Christophers and everyone is valuedwhatever their race religion or lifestyle

We serve a diverse population of 15 million people in the London boroughs of Bromley Croydon Lambeth Lewisham and Southwark reaching some of Englands most deprived areas

St Christophers care services are delivered in a range of settings including patients own homes our four inpatient wards and our Anniversary Centre palliative care delivered by specialist doctors and nurses physiotherapy and occupational therapy social work and welfare support adult bereavement services psychiatrist support creative therapies and activities complementary therapies spiritual care and specialist support for bereaved children

We are a registered charity It costs over pound14 million every year to deliver all our services Only about one third of our income comes from the NHS We must raise more than pound9 million to continue to delivery our patient and family services free of charge This balance must be raised from grants legacies the generous support of our local community local businesses trusts and through our shops

History

History
In founding St Christophers in 1967 Dame Cicely Saunders made an extraordinary contribution to alleviating human suffering The hospice has been a centre of innovation and insight ever since

So what were things like before St Christophers

By the 1950s social trends were changing and most people died in hospitals rather than in their own homes This change reflected the growing number of treatments available in hospitals The medical profession increasingly saw death as failure

Cancer was the most feared diagnosis Physical pain afflicted at least three quarters of cancer sufferers and appropriate painkillers were rarely used Morphine was considered addictive and too dangerous

Led by Dame Cicely St Christophers set out to discover practical solutions and to disseminate them widely There were of course other hospices before St Christophers These hospices were oases of dedicated nursing care for the terminally ill but they were not what we now think of as modern palliative care In contrast St Christophers was committed to education and research as well as excellence in clinical care

This combination of science care and sharing of experiences identified the opening of St Christophers Hospice with the start of the modern hospice movement