Croatian National Coordinator Bruno Barsic on His Passion for Infectious Diseases

Bruno Barsic is infectious diseases professor at the School of Medicine, University of Zagreb, Croatia. He is Head of the Intensive Care Unit in the University-affiliated Hospital for Infectious Diseases Zagreb. Prof. Dr. Barsic’s passion for infectious diseases came from an early age, upon reading a book on microbes that sparked his interest.

“My interest for infectious diseases dates from my childhood when I read a book called „Hunters on Microbes“. I was impressed by the dedication and zeal microbiology pioneers put in their work in order to discover new things, and their persistence in confronting mediocrity. I am trained as infectious diseases and intensive care physician, and I never regretted my choice. We are treating acutely, often critically ill patients with multi-organ failures and often we are able not only to prolong their life for more or less short periods of time, but to completely restore their health. To me that is something amazing. Another advantage is that we belong to a huge, international family. People dedicated to their work, constantly striving to increase our knowledge and improve patients’ outcome.  It is good to know that we are not alone, and to paraphrase one great Croatian poet: „Don’t be afraid, there are others just as you, who unknown to you live your lives…“.

International studies bring us together to study particular problems and we get acquainted with others through joint work. Besides that, participation in international studies is important particularly for younger investigators. I am not amongst them, but it reminds me of a Sinatra song: “Fairy tales can come true, it can happen to you, to be young at heart…“.  Based on my previous positive experience in international studies, I strongly encourage younger colleagues to participate for several reasons:

• Active participation increases professional knowledge and quality of routine practice;
• Implements good clinical practice and increases adherence to common professional guidelines;
• Creates opportunity to discuss with other participants common medical and non-medical problems that can’t be found in textbooks or papers;
• Enables authorship or co-authorship in professional papers important in developing a professional and university career;
• This is particularly important for smaller countries like Croatia with limited resources and number of sites for a larger multicentre study.

I hope COMBACTE will succeed and bring a lot of papers which will be quoted for years. Once I retire I will be proud to know that I had a small contribution, while reading and recognizing footprints of project results in papers available on a tablet. I hope that will happen while sipping a glass of good wine in the tranquility of my mountainside house.”