Dr. Dorin Bica – Head Neurosurgeon
Dr. Dorin Bica
- Head Neurosurgeon
Profile:
2009-2013 - resident physician in clinics in France and England:
- 1 year – Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, Paris, France (Tumour Surgery and Vascular Surgery)
- 6 months - Hôpital Enfants Malades Necker, Paris, France (Paediatric Neurosurgery)
- 1 year and 6 months – Foch Hospital, Paris, France (Pituitary Neurosurgery, Skull Base Tumours Surgery, Vascular Surgery, Spinal Surgery)
- Hôpital Enfants Malades Necker, Paris, France (Paediatric Neurosurgery)
- 6 months - Regional University Centre „La Timone”, Marseille, France (Brain Tumours, Spinal Surgery, Cerebral Vascular Surgery)
- 7 months - James Cook University Hospital Middlesbrough, United Kingdom (Brain Tumours, Cerebral Vascular Surgery - Aneurysms and Cerebral Vascular Malformations)
EDUCATION
November 2012 – October 2013
Resident Neurosurgeon – “Pitié-Salpêtrière” Hospital, Paris, France
May 2012 – October 2012
Resident Neurosurgeon, “Hopital Necker Enfants Malades”, Paris, France
May 2010 – October 2010
Resident Neurosurgeon, “Hospital de la Timone”, Marseille, France
January 2009 – August 2009
Resident Neurosurgeon, “James Cook” University Hospital, Middlesbrough, UK
August 2000 – May 2006
Student, University of Medicine and Pharmacy “Victor Babeș”, Timișoara, Romania
1 year “Pitié-Salpêtrière” Hospital
EXPERIENCE
January 2018 – Present
Co-founder and Head Neurosurgeon – “NeuroHope”, Bucharest, Romania
January 2015 – December 2017
Head Neurosurgeon and co-founder of the Neurosurgery Department – “Colentina” Hospital, Bucharest, Romania
January 2014 – December 2014
Head Neurosurgeon – “Marie Curie” Children’s Hospital, Bucharest, Romania
Find out more about Dr. Dorin Bica:
“We’re building the future and this is our responsibility!”
I chose to take this professional journey in order to develop and improve in the field of Neurosurgery. I knew from the start that my chosen path will take me back to Romania. I chose to study in the UK and France for 5 years. The goal was to become independent in my profession. I always knew that I would be just a student over there, I never wanted to leave Romania permanently. The experience in those high-performance health systems was very relevant, I was very well capitalized and protected by these systems. I felt that the system wants to capitalize on my skills, to evolve. When I returned in 2014 I thought of a new vision: to create my own system. Not alone, but together with a group of people that shared the same vision and values.
Romania has offered me chances which I probably would not have had elsewhere. I was able to build things from scratch in the field of neurosurgery. Together with my team, we have managed to make these health microsystems work to the standards of high-level neurosurgery in other European countries and around the world.
Every society must put education first
Health occupies the 2nd place. Why? Because providing health services to a society requires having teachers, mentors, people to teach our future doctors. In order to have good doctors you must provide proper education for them. Doctors who teach must also have the ability to be good teachers. The appropriate legal framework is required for this. For me, education has always been by far the most important thing, both in my training and in the existence of any society.
During the training of a neurosurgeon, respect for the profession and for the man who becomes your patient takes precedence.
The role of a mentor is essential. I would like to teach those who come to learn from us: medicine, science, respect for the patient, for the workplace, for oneself. Rather than making an incision, in the training of the neurosurgeon, respect for the profession and for the person who becomes your patient takes precedence. There are matters in the doctor-patient relationship that are much more useful. One has to try to see their patients on time, put themselves in the patient’s shoes, treat the person with empathy and respect.
Neurosurgery is a complex science, for which you have to train constantly
Future neurosurgeons must be disciplined and always up to date, he must read and research all the time. I don’t condone the use of learning through contagion. This is happening in France, it is also happening in Romania. It is incomplete. The teacher, no matter how good, has no way of knowing every little thing. It is his duty to go home and read, to see what other doctors in the world are doing. That way, he will start asking himself some questions. This discipline can take you very far, if you are honest with yourself and your resident. They’re going to start asking you, “Why is this tumour developing like this?” The resident should not take for granted what his mentor teaches him.
Neurosurgery is a complex science, for which you have to train constantly. The same goes for any other field. You have to have put in 10,000 hours of flight time, dancing, fighting. When you reach that point, you realize that you can do all these neurosurgical interventions. Suddenly, the surgical gesture becomes natural. This was the main benefit of years of study and practice. We have seen everything that is considered “top of the line” in all the subspecialties of neurosurgery. I brought all my expertise here and I’ve adapted it to the system here.
We have been preparing all these years to treat people with respect for his integrity, and if medicine is evolving scientifically and technologically, we must keep up with the new standards. The new standard today means a minimally invasive approach towards neurosurgery. “Minimally invasive” means having great respect for healthy tissues. We approach the lesions minimally, but with the same qualitative result. The lesions are smaller, but this does not mean that we make a smaller incision, we leave the tumor in its place. The goal of treatment is to solve the patient’s problem, hopefully, to address the lesions to the maximum degree with minimal damage to healthy tissue. If technology, patient anatomy, neuroanesthesia, electrophysiology and anything else will allow us to minimize damaging the healthy tissue, then we will do it. We respect the tissue and maintaining the integrity of brain functions.
Why did I choose neurosurgery?
Maybe if I had chosen another specialty, I would have done it just as well. I would have been just as interested. Neurosurgery combines knowledge about the diagnosis of brain and spine pathologies with the mastery of the surgical gesture and, first of all, with the ethics of the therapeutic process. Who do you operate on, when you operate, what can you offer? The neurosurgeon is not a “robot” that does a good operation.
Sometimes we must make decisions that have nothing to do with performing a surgery. We think about what it is better for the patient, how to proceed in order to provide the patient with a better and more dignified life. Our role is to ensure that a life’s integrity and dignity is maintained.