Alumni Quarterly: Department of Family Medicine Celebrates 40 Years

Summary

In 1970, medicine was going through a major transition. General practitioners were retiring and fewer medical school graduates were taking their places. New doctors were attracted more and more to careers in specialties.

Within this context of shrinking numbers of primary care physicians, the American Medical Association (AMA) decided to recognize a new specialty of family medicine and promote residency teaching programs based in medical schools that would train medical students to become family physicians. The AMA identified the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health (SMPH) as a possible site.

"What we were doing at the time was very compatible with what the AMA wanted for training family doctors," says Marc Hansen, MD, a pediatrician and faculty member at the medical school. "We sent in an application and were chosen as one of the first 15 medical schools in the United States to offer training for family medicine physicians."

Hansen was a visionary who already had developed the University Family Health Service, a multi-disciplinary team of physicians, nurses and therapists focused on primary care at UW Hospital and Clinics.