Tomasz Grodzki

Speaker of the Senate of the Republic of Poland, 10th term Senator, 9th and 10th terms Member of the Parliamentary Caucus of Civic Coalition Born on May 13th, 1958 in Szczecin. Passionate about science since his early years, he graduated from High School No 2 in Szczecin in 1977 with high level curriculum in mathematics and physics. He studied at the Faculty of Medicine of the Pomeranian Medical Academy (now Pomeranian Medical University) in Szczecin. He co-organised the first students’ parliament there and a day-care for students’ children. As an active opposition member, he was one of the four leaders of a student strike in 1981. Consequently, he was blacklisted and had to struggle to get a job, despite having graduated second in his class of 1983. He started his professional career as an intern at the Regional Centre for Occupational Medicine in Szczecin and then, from 1984, worked at Professor Alfred Sokołowski Specialist Hospital in Szczecin-Zdunowo, a hospital he has been connected with ever since. Following his doctoral dissertation, he became a specialist in thoracic surgery in 1991. He was appointed chief of the thoracic surgery ward in 1995, which was later transformed into the Department of Thoracic Surgery and Transplantation of Pomeranian Medical University. Between 1998 and 2016 he was Hospital Director in Szczecin-Zdunowo and President of the College of West Pomeranian Hospital Directors. He was also a co-founder of the Polish Society of Cardiothoracic Surgeons and served as President of the Polish Thoracic Surgeons Club in 2003–2015. He received his habilitation in 2003 and was board certified in clinical transplantology in 2007. He received the title of professor of medical sciences from President of the Republic of Poland Bronisław Komorowski in 2011. The same year, a team from the Department of Thoracic Surgery and Transplantation of the Pomeranian Medical University, headed by Professor Grodzki, performed the first successful lung transplantation in Szczecin. Three years later, Tomasz Grodzki was appointed national consultant for thoracic surgery. He served as President of the Polish Society of Cardio-Thoracic Surgeons from 2016 to 2018 and President of the European Society of Thoracic Surgeons from 2003 to 2004. In 2004, he became the first Polish member of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery, the world’s most prestigious thoracic surgery society. He was a member of Szczecin City Council between 2006 and 2015. On his initiative Szczecin launched a first in Poland lung cancer screening programme based on low dose chest CT for thousands of high lung cancer risk patients. Tomasz Grodzki was awarded a title of Manager of Healthcare Market in the public facilities category in 2013 for building from scratch the lung transplantation centre in Szczecin, which became the second such a centre in Poland, and for successful first in Szczecin transplantation of both lungs in a patient with cystic fibrosis. He was awarded a title of Honorary Ambassador of Szczecin. Tomasz Grodzki is married, with two daughters and three granddaughters. He is a member of the Civic Platform party.

Polish surgeon and politician