By the end of the year she had named it after St Christopher, patron saint of travellers.She initially wanted a Church of England hospice, but several of the major grant-giving organisations required her to make it open to people of all faiths, and she modified the plan accordingly; the hospice was to be "a religious foundation of an open character". She distinguished between mild, medium and severe pain, each of which was to be treated differently. She also used medicines to relieve other problems of the dying, such as bedsores, nausea, depression, constipation, and breathlessness. One patient, transferred from another hospital, said,They used to see how long I could go without an injection I used to be pouring with sweat because of the pain I couldn't speak to anyone and I was having crying fits I think I've onlycried once since I've been here The biggest difference is feeling so calm. I don't get worked up or upset.She was a good listener and paid systematic attention to patient narratives.In 1960, as a newly qualified doctor working at St Joseph's, she met Antoni Michniewicz, the second of the three Polish men who influenced her life. Again, they had a close spiritual relationship (he was dying, and they never had a chance to be alone together).
In it she said,It appears that many patients feel deserted by their doctors at the end. Ideally the doctor should remain the centre of a team who work together to relieve where they cannot heal, to keep the patient's own struggle within his compass and to bring hope and consolation to the end.After qualifying, she obtained a research scholarship at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington, where she studied pain management in the incurably ill, and at the same time worked at St Joseph's, a hospice for the dying run by nuns. This greatly reduced their fear and anxiety and this, in turn, reduced pain. She said that there was no such thing as intractable pain, though she had met intractable doctors.
It was a hardheaded approach ("constant pain needs constant control"), whereby patients were given regular relief and not forced to wait until their pain returned and they cried out. Notably, she wrote six articles on care of the dying in Nursing Times in 1959; they were favourably reviewed in The Lancet.At St Joseph's she introduced the system of pain control she had developed at St Luke's. She developed record-keeping methods on 1,100 patients, introducing a punch-card system, which made good scientific sense. Here she used her medical expertise and research findings to help the nuns improve their standard of care.
