Interview with Vincent Hunt

Abstract

Vincent Hunt begins by discussing his background, including his education and why he became a physician. He discusses his experiences working as a physician in a rural area (Red Lake Falls, MN); as a medical student in the late 1950s; as an intern at Bethesda Hospital; and as a resident at the UMN. He discusses curriculum changes in the late 1950s, the University of Minnesota’s Comprehensive Clinic, comprehensive clinic programs at other universities, lobbying the state Legislature, the Department of Family Practice, Minnesota Academy of General Practice and Herb Huffington, the Rural Physician Associate program and the Rural Medical Care program, relations between the Schools in the health sciences, the heath sciences reorganization in 1970, and relations between the Medical School and the Mayo Clinic. He talks about the UMN Medical School faculty, Owen Wagensteen, Richard Magraw, Ben Fuller, Robert Howard, and Edward Ciriacy. He discusses medical ethics, his decision to enter general practice, nurses in Red Lake Falls, the introduction of Medicare and Medicaid, family practice as a specialty, rural medicine, tensions between academic physicians and private practitioners, the attempt to establish a second medical school in the Twin Cities in the 1960s, the relationship between family practice and internal medicine, general practice, and the comprehensive health insurance plan.