| Roger Hunt |
 Born in August 1957, Roger Hunt was raised, educated and now works in Adelaide. Attending Flinders Medical School, Roger Hunt
was at first interested in psychiatry, but gradually found the physical body to be more and more fascinating. Roger Hunt undertook
medical and surgical rotations during internship at the Royal Adelaide Hospital and RMO year at the Repatriation General Hospital.
He then worked at Adelaide Jail, then in paediatrics at Flinders Medical Centre. However, during a period of locum work in
1984, he found himself covering for a doctor in Kalyra Hospital, a 69-bedded hospital with a 19-bedded hospice ward. Roger
Hunt therefore describes his move from paediatrics to palliative care as ‘happenstance’. Roger Hunt goes on to describe how
public pressure at the closure of Kalyra Hospital led to the extensive refurbishment to make a new hospice unit, Daw House
Hospice, in the grounds of the Repatriation General Hospital, which opened on the 8th August 1988. The interview also explores
Roger Hunt’s research interests in ‘place of death’ and bio-ethics, as well as his observations on the denial in the hospice
movement of the ‘death hastening’ side-effects of some palliative treatments. The topic of voluntary euthanasia is discussed
via patient anecdotes, references to research including Roger Hunt’s own conference presentations and publications on the
debate, reactions within the field of palliative care and the rise of a second generation of physicians, and the Rights of
the Terminally Ill Act proposed in Australia’s Northern Territories in 1996.
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| Interview conducted by David CLark, 24 September 1998 |
| Interview Duration: 1 hour, 15 minutes |
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