| Prue Clench |
 Prue Clench was born in 1942 and educated at home by her mother, a physiotherapist, and her father, a chaplain. Deciding on
a career in nursing, Prue Clench trained at the Middlesex Hospital, but went on to marry a widower when she was twenty-four
and raised his two children. Finally returning to nursing, Prue Clench worked on radiotherapy ward 9 at the Royal United Hospital
in Bath, where inadequate symptom control prompted her to contact Cicely Saunders. In 1975, she undertook a month’s training
at St Christopher’s, and sought to bring this experience back to ward 9. However, Prue Clench developed a vision for hospice
care in the community, and formed a steering committee in 1976 to develop this idea. As a result, Prue Clench resigned from
ward 9 in 1977 to work as chairman/nurse of Dorothy House Foundation, which subsequently opened a six-bed unit in 1979. By
1982, Dorothy House Foundation was fully fledged, and Prue Clench moved on to become a freelance, full-time national adviser
for the hospice movement, working especially with Macmillan, in the areas of hospice management, and Macmillan nursing, both
in the community and in ‘hospital support teams’. In the early 1990s Prue Clench spent three years as Director of Thames Valley
Hospice. Prue Clench also has a long standing involvement with St Columba’s Fellowship, an organisation supporting Christians
working in the hospice movement.
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| Interview conducted by David Clark, 9 December 1996 |
| Interview Duration: 2 hours, 30 minutes |
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