David Praill shares the leadership lessons he has learned over two decades working at the heart of the hospice movement.  

For almost 20 years I had the privilege of serving as chief executive of Hospice UK (formerly known as Help the Hospices). I stood down from the role at the end of July.

Working with hospices and their communities across the UK, and with colleagues in many countries around the world, has been an exciting and humbling experience. It has been great to help Hospice UK – which was founded by the remarkable Anne, Duchess of Norfolk – become the national leadership voice for hospice care.  

Changing the world

In this article I want to reflect on the huge contribution to society that hospices have made since they first appeared only 50 years ago, and try to summarise some of what I have learned during the past 20 years about the qualities required by charity leaders (see figure 1).  

I was fortunate to first get involved in hospice care back in 1991, at a time when Dame Cicely Saunders – the founder of the hospice movement – was still actively engaged in providing local, national and international leadership.  

Dame Cicely opened St. Christopher’s Hospice – the first ‘modern hospice’ – in south London in 1967, and was the driving force behind both the development of the hospice movement (not just in the UK but around the world) and the birth of palliative medicine as a new medical speciality.

Hospices began to be respected for their holistic approach – focusing on the physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual, social and economic aspects of illness.

We now have some 220 voluntary-funded hospices (including local charities, Sue Ryder and Marie Curie centres) across the UK. There are also around 125,000 volunteers providing support, estimated to have a value of more than £200m annually.

Thanks to Dame Cicely’s vision, there are also approximately 16,000 hospice and palliative care units in 160 countries around the world – yet it is estimated that still only one in ten of the estimated 20 million-plus people who need palliative care at the end of their life are receiving it.