Our new clinic manager, Bjørn Tore Haga , has extensive and broad experience in several fields of surgery, is among the country's most experienced plastic surgeons, and is passionate about the profession.
– I am probably, as the cliché says, genetically burdened, he smiles. At first glance, it is difficult to imagine that behind the good-natured, well-trained facade hides one of the masters of plastic surgery in Norway, a professional who, despite several decades in the discipline, has preserved his curiosity and respect for the profession.
– My father is a plastic surgeon, and I think that's what lit the spark. So then I studied medicine in Bergen, followed by rotations in Kristiansand and in Hitra. For a short period I worked as a general practitioner/regular doctor, while also taking shifts in hospitals. Then I was in the orthopedic department for a year and a half, before I went to the plastic surgery department at Ullevål. In 2001 I became a specialist in plastic surgery, he sums up.
– Happy to operate
For the next 19 years, he was based at Haukeland Hospital as a consultant at the Plastic Surgery Department of Health-Bergen, of which three years as head of the department, a position he resigned.
– Management wasn't for me, I'm far too fond of operating. I think I have more talent for surgery than for administration, he laughs.
His talent for surgery is indisputable. While he was a consultant in plastic surgery at Haukeland, he has been a general surgeon at Haraldsplass Diakonale Sykehus (1.5 years), consultant in plastic surgery at Volvat Medical Center in Bergen since 2001, and consultant in plastic surgery at Medi3 in Ålesund since 2013. He still holds the latter two positions, but left Haukeland and the public health system in 2020.
– As a public doctor, you operate and leave the follow-up of the patient to the doctor on duty. As a private doctor, I operate and follow up on the patient: they become my patient, and I see the result directly, can self-criticize, adjust and possibly change to perfect. I constantly have to take responsibility for whether something can be improved!
– Surgery is mass training
– Many specialize early and become thin very quickly, says Bjørn Tore. He himself has operated on everything from a newborn to a 90-year-old, and has both advanced hand surgery, migraine surgery and a wide range of operations within cosmetic surgery in his repertoire. In addition to cosmetic surgery, he has worked extensively with reconstruction after injuries and breast reconstruction.
– Breast reconstruction can involve moving a piece of skin and subcutaneous fat from the lower abdomen to the chest and creating a new breast, he explains enthusiastically.
– We choose the lower abdomen since most women have excess skin and fat of the same consistency as the breast here, so we get a breast with a natural shape and soft consistency. In addition, the new breast will change in size like a normal breast when weight changes, as the breast mainly consists of fat. This is possible because we take blood vessels from the donor area and use microsurgical techniques to connect these with blood vessels on the chest so that the new breast gets blood! He smiles at his own commitment, and adds:
– I love what I do!
The above is also an example of how the breadth of Bjørn Tore's work provides insight that he can use when working in other fields, while also expanding and maintaining his technical repertoire.
“ Surgery is mass training,” he states.
– You have to experience it. You can't read your way to being good.
A lifestyle
Bjørn Tore was born and raised in Bergen, and this is also where he lives – when he is not at work in Ålesund or Stavanger.
– There will be a few travel days per year, and travel expenses of several hundred thousand, but it is part of the lifestyle, he explains.
– What's more, it doesn't feel like a burden when you do what interests you, and those around you share the interest: both my partner, sister and father are plastic surgeons. And there's always something new to learn, he enthuses.
– People are so incredibly smart, there is something new happening everywhere all the time, so in addition to operating, I am at professional conferences all the time. It's good to be in that dynamic.
Now Stavanger Plastic Surgery is also part of the aforementioned dynamic.
– In Stavanger, things are small, and Silje (managing director) knows everyone. Here I have good, enthusiastic people around me, and a feeling that here we take care of people, we help them! That's why it's extra nice to stumble upon this, and be part of developing it. At the same time, I have experience to bring to the table that they didn't have before within both hand and migraine surgery.
But, every now and then, Bjørn Tore also has to take a little break.
– It can be a bit of a lonely life moving around, but I'm good at using the weekends to meet friends. I also try to take a day off a week, preferably Friday, so my partner and I can take some oval weekends together. We enjoy skiing, randonee, and have a cabin plot near Geilo, with the ambition of building one someday…
