Rory Murphy, MD, is a neurosurgeon in the Department of Neurosurgery at Barrow Neurological Institute, Arizona, USA.
Rory focuses on complex cranial and spinal pathologies, including tumors, spinal cord compression, and peripheral nerve surgery. Dr Murphy is active in translational cervical spinal cord injury research and a member of cervical spine research society. He is the site principal investigator for the Department of Defense Cervical Spinal Cord Injury Trial and previously served as a PI for the Missouri Spinal Cord Injury Research Program, and is co-founder of Intelligent Implants.
SSN: What drove you to choose surgery as a career – and neurosurgery in particular?
RM: From a young age, I became interested in helping people regain movement after a neurological injury. I scheduled neurology, orthopaedic surgery and neurosurgery rotations to see what was the best option to achieve this. During a neurosurgery rotation at Medizinische Hochschule Hannover (MHH), I came to love neurosurgery and its practice and decided it was the path for me.
SSN: It is clear that the healthcare industry has been greatly impacted by the pandemic; what has been the greatest impact for you within the spinal surgery industry?
RM: As an industry as a whole, we had to become flexible, step outside of the norm, to integrate new technologies, methods, etc., to treat patients. The rapid adoption of Telehealth and new online decision support technologies to help people access appropriate care quicker was pivotal for patient care during the pandemic.
SSN: What’s the best part of your job?
RM: Achieving a patient’s goals and objectives through surgery – ultimately putting them on a road to recovery