YouTube – Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame
The Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame pays tribute to Florence Wald, founder of hospice care in the United States. Dean of the Yale University School of Nursing, Wald became interested in the care of the terminally ill and looked to work being done by Dr. Cicely Saunders at St. Christopher’s Hospice in London, England, in the 1960s. Inspired by Saunders’s approach, Wald incorporated these ideas into Yale’s nursing curriculum—influencing the interactions between nurses, patients, and their families. Determined to change end-of-life care, Wald resigned from Yale and founded Connecticut Hospice in Branford, Connecticut, in 1974, and by the time of her death in 2008, helped improve the care of 900,000 patients annually in over 3,000 hospice programs across the United States.
