Neurosurgeon
Dr Tom Morris is a neurosurgeon in Melbourne, Australia, subspecialising in spinal surgery. He holds a Fellowship of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in Neurosurgery (FRACS, 2016), and an MBBS and a Master of Philosophy from the University of Adelaide. His clinical focus is degenerative disease of the cervical and lumbar spine, minimally invasive and endoscopic technique, and the question of when an operation is, and is not, the right answer for a patient.
He trained in neurosurgery across South Australia and Victoria, beginning at the Royal Adelaide Hospital in 2007 and completing accredited training in 2016. He worked as a spinal surgeon in the Department of Orthopaedics at Ballarat Base Hospital from 2016 to 2018, and as a consultant neurosurgeon at the Royal Melbourne Hospital from 2020 to 2023 — training and practice that spans both of the craft groups that operate on the spine.
His Master of Philosophy examined the role of haptoglobin in experimental subarachnoid haemorrhage. He has published in the Journal of Neurosurgery: Pediatrics, the Journal of Clinical Neuroscience and the Journal of Gastrointestinal Surgery, and presented to the Annual Scientific Meeting of the Neurosurgical Society of Australasia. He has taught as an associate clinical lecturer at the University of Adelaide and the University of Notre Dame, and has been a proctor for Medtronic in oblique lateral interbody fusion (OLIF) technique since 2017.
He writes here about spinal surgery: how the decision to operate is reached, what the evidence supports, and how patients can make sense of their own scans and options. Where a procedure is discussed, its risks are set out alongside its benefits.