Dame Cicely Mary Strode Saunders, OM, DBE (born 22 June 1918) is a prominent British physician and writer, involved with many international universities. She is most famous for her role in the birth of the hospice movement, emphasizing the importance of palliative care in modern medicine.

Saunders was educated at Roedean , St Anne's College, Oxford, St Thomas's Hospital Medical School and at the Nightingale School of Nursing . She founded St Christopher's Hospice , with which she has been involved continuously since 1967. She is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, a Fellow of the Royal College of Nurses and a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons.