Andrea L. Pusic, MD, MHS, FACS, FRCSC, chief of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at Brigham Health has been appointed professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School.
Andrea L. Pusic, MD, MHS, FACS, FRCSC
Chief, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Brigham Health
Director, Patient-Reported Outcomes, Value & Experience (PROVE) Center, Brigham Health
Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School
Andrea L. Pusic, MD, MHS, FACS, FRCSC, completed her medical degree at the Cumming School of Medicine (University of Calgary) in Canada and 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).
Dr. Pusic is an internationally-renowned innovator and leader in the area of patient-reported outcomes and surgical experience. This is increasingly important in the current health care environment of measuring quality, assessing value and ultimately, influencing how health care is funded. Dr. Pusic leads the Patient-Reported Outcomes, Value & Experience (PROVE) Center at Brigham Health. The scope of the PROVE Center is focused on patient-reported outcomes, patient experience and value-based surgery in surgical patients throughout Brigham Health.
Dr. Pusic’s research focuses on the measurement of quality of life and patient satisfaction in surgery. Dual training in epidemiology and surgery has enabled her to lead a team of experts in psychometrics, quality of life and social science methods to develop, validate and use new quantitative measures to assess patient outcomes. 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.
Throughout her career, Dr. Pusic has been involved in research studies that seek to better understand the patient perspective on surgical outcomes and experiences. She is 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. Altogether, she has been a principal investigator or co-principal investigator on over $10 million in federal research grants.
Dr. Pusic has authored over 200 scientific articles and book chapters and has mentored more than 24 surgeons during various stages of their academic careers. In 2017, she was awarded the Research Achievement Award from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons/Plastic Surgery Foundation. Dr. Pusic is vice-president of WomenforWomen Reconstructive Surgery and regularly leads surgical camps to provide reconstructive surgery for injured women and girls in the developing world. She is a past board member of the International Society of Quality of Life (ISOQOL) and was recently elected president-elect of the Plastic Surgery Foundation.
