Pusic named Chief of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at Brigham Health

Andrea Pusic, MD, MHS, FACS, FRCSC, has been named Chief of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at Brigham Health. She will see patients in clinic and in the operating room at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital.

Dr. Pusic studied medicine at the Cumming School of Medicine (University of Calgary) and later earned her Master of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. She completed a general surgery residency at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia and a plastic surgery residency at McGill University in Montreal, followed by a plastic and reconstructive surgery fellowship at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC).

She comes to Brigham Health from MSKCC where she worked as an attending surgeon alongside Dr. Tari King, who currently serves as Chief of Breast Surgery at Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center and also performs surgery at BWFH. “I’m very much looking forward to working with Dr. King again and collaborating with the breast cancer surgeons at Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Breast Center,” she says.

She says she is also looking forward to working with her plastic and reconstructive colleagues with the goal of building on the strong foundation already in place. “I’m thrilled to be joining this group of extraordinary surgeons,” she says.

In addition to her expertise as a reconstructive surgeon, Dr. Pusic is a leader in the area of patient-reported outcomes and surgical experience with many ongoing projects. She was the Director of the MSKCC Patient-Reported Outcomes and Surgical Experience Program and the American College of Surgeons’ representative to the International Patient Reported Outcome Measurements (PROMs) Collaborative. She is also principal investigator of a study funded by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) that examines how electronic patient-reporting of symptoms may improve surgical care. The patient-reported outcomes instrument she developed for breast surgery, the BREAST-Q, has been widely adopted for research and clinical care and serves as the basis for development of other outcome measures in surgery.

Along with Chris Gibbons, PhD, she now leads the newly formed Patient-Reported Outcomes, Value & Experience (PROVE) Center at Brigham Health. The PROVE Center focuses on patient-reported outcomes, patient experience and value-based surgery and includes surgical patients at Brigham Health, specifically to encompass the Departments of Surgery, Orthopedic Surgery, Neurosurgery and Obstetrics and Gynecology. This research focuses on the measurement of quality of life and patient satisfaction in surgery. The team seeks to develop, validate and use new quantitative measures to assess patient outcomes.

When she is not at work, Dr. Pusic enjoys spending time with her two sons, ages 17 and 23. In fact, she recently traveled to Africa with her younger son where she performed reconstructive surgery on girls and young women in need. It’s an experience her son looked forward to. “This was his second trip with me,” she says. “He is able to be really helpful and enjoys being a member of the team.”

Published 4/11/2018