Mayo doctor featured in Netflix docuseries

Dr. Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa, or Dr. Q, is more than the sum of what you see. He is a husband, father, philosopher and philanthropist. He is also a neurosurgeon at the Mayo Clinic featured among the subjects in the Netflix docuseries “The Surgeon’s Cut.”
In December 2020, Netflix released the docuseries “The Surgeon’s Cut” profiling four ground-breaking surgeons from around the world, each with a visionary approach to their craft. Among those visionaries is Quinones-Hinojosa, known to his patients and colleagues as Dr. Q. He came to the Mayo Clinic in 2017 from the renowned Johns Hopkins in Baltimore where he served as a research professor of oncology. It’s his personal narrative that frames his story.
“The way they capture the essence in that series of not just me, but the other stories between the physicians and patients is amazing. I am truly honored to be part of it, no question about it,” said Dr. Q during a recent Zoom interview from his research lab on the Mayo Hospital campus.
“I thought it was important for people to see that not all brain tumors need to be cancerous. Not all surgeries need to be devastating to the patient. I have a great relationship with my patients and I don’t know if I’m going to find a cure for cancer in my lab but I do my best to give my patients hope. If they themselves can give hope to another patient, then we are on this journey together. It’s also an opportunity to showcase Mayo Clinic. I think it’s an amazing place and it’s right here in your backyard and on the world’s stage.”
Dr. Q speaks in complex ribbons of thought, layering metaphors to illustrate a point. He is passionate about his work and dedicated to improving quality of life and inspiring hope for his patients. A single question often elicits a multi-pronged response, branching off down different paths but ultimately winding up exactly where he was meant to be.  
Even with his lower face obscured by a mask, Dr. Q is the kind of person that smiles with his entire being. His eyes twinkle like he shares an inside joke with the universe, a cosmic secret whispered among the stars. His eyes are rimmed by dark frames, his demeanor inviting and humble, even as he peppers conversations with words like Harvard and finding a cure for cancer. This is all part of who he is.
Revered by his colleagues as a rock star on the Mayo Hospital campus, Dr. Q is a celebrity in surgical scrubs. He walks in quick purposeful bursts, casting a warm glow through the sterile hallway leading to the operating room. The staccato clap of high fives ricochet off the polished floors. “Are you ready to rock and roll?”
In the segment entitled “The Sacred Brain,” cameras capture the poignant moments leading up to a procedure to remove a recurring brain tumor. The patient and his wife share a tender goodbye before he is wheeled into his second brain surgery. There is a profound level of trust between the physician and his patient. Once he scrubs in, Dr. Q moves seamlessly from rock star to maestro, conducting the pace and precision of each delicate movement.
“For me, nothing changes when I go into the operating room and the president of the United States could be in there. It doesn’t matter to me. The cameras could be in there. Absolutely nothing changes,” he said. “They film me around the world doing what I do but it doesn’t change for me. If they are willing to chase me around with a camera, I always tell them I’m not going to stop, I’m not going to do another take, I’m not an actor so just be ready to catch what you want to catch. I am who I am and people see what they see but I always worry from the patient’s perspective because it’s their privacy. It’s such an intimate moment between the physician and the patient, especially for the type of surgery that I do, a lot of awake craniotomies where the patient is awake.”
It’s a delicate dance to ensure all of the tumor is eliminated while ensuring no damage to the patient’s brain function. Each cut is precise, every decision weighed carefully. Dr. Q frequently stops the surgery as a member of his surgical team instructs the patient to complete a battery of commands from sticking out his tongue or smiling to recognizing whether two movements of music are the same or different. An incorrect answer will halt the procedure indefinitely while teams recalculate each step.
“That to me is art. It connects that human being to the extraordinary skill that we need to be able to do that but not disconnecting it from that human being feeling pain when they are in pain and that roller coaster of emotion. If you are willing to be with them, it gives them tremendous strength and courage. At the end of the day, we may not be able to fix and cure their cancer but the fact that they have someone like me in their backyard who says ‘I’ve got your back and I’m going to help you not just during but beyond the surgery’, I think it means a lot to them.”
For Dr. Q, the mission is simple. There is no pretension or God complex. He gives back because he can to honor where he came from and inspire those from similar heritage or economic backgrounds to shoot for the stars. He sees himself as a mechanic. The same hands that once raked through the soft earth as a migrant farm worker now perform life-saving neurosurgery on the most complex organ in the human body.
“I was a little boy growing up in Mexico and I remember seeing the Americans, the ones that did missionary work coming in and giving their heart and soul and rolling up their sleeves and eating with the community and I was inspired,” he said. “I said if God one day blesses me with the ability to do so, I am going to do the same thing. It’s important. I owe it to myself. I owe it to those giants that came before me. I owe it to my family, my children, my wife, I owe it to the United States because it opened doors for me and allowed me to be who I am today.”
Growing up the oldest of six children living together in a two-bedroom house in Mexicali, Mexico, his father worked at a gas station and his paternal grandmother was a local healer and midwife whom he credits for his compassion for his patients.
As a teenager, he spent the summers traveling to California’s San Joaquin Valley in the back of a tarp-covered pickup truck to pick tomatoes and prepare cotton fields for harvest. By 19, he relocated to the United States and found work on the railroad. At night, he was studying English at the local community college. He also tutored Spanish-speaking students in math and science and joined the debate team hoping to improve his English and public speaking skills.
After earning a scholarship to the University of California at Berkeley to study psychology, he began to explore the function of the human brain.  “When I was at UC Berkeley, my major was psychology and I realized there was a tremendous opportunity for me to understand behavior from the human brain perspective, from the physiology of the brain,” recalled Dr. Q, whose honors thesis at UC Berkeley involved strengthening the two hemispheres of the brain by blocking the opiate receptor. By the time he arrived at Harvard medical school, he was hooked.
“I began to realize there was an opportunity to go beyond that. I wasn’t sure what that meant. It’s not like I had relatives who were physicians. I was a young kid in his early 20s dreaming big,” he said. “As a kid growing up poor, I didn’t have much. I had to do with the little bit that I had and I had to be creative. I do believe in the struggles and tribulations of growing and having adversity. If a butterfly is going through its metamorphosis, and you try to help the butterfly by removing some of the obstacles that it has to overcome, it will never become a butterfly."
His skills in the operating room and the laboratory speak to high-level contributions he’s making in the field of neurosurgery. His research is made possible through several millions in from the National Institute of Health, which has helped establish the Mayo Clinic as one of the national leaders in NIH funding for neuro-oncology and neurosurgery.
As the professor and chairman of the department of neurologic surgery at the Mayo Clinic, Dr. Q also brought a number of researchers from Johns Hopkins.  He was previously featured on the ABC series “Hopkins” which received the prestigious Peabody Award. Dr. Q tries to keep a low profile and doesn’t boast of his accomplishments after he received threats against his life because of his heritage and his status as an immigrant.
“You would be surprised how many people have a strong reaction against people like myself who came to this country with American dreams. Now I try to keep it low key but every now and then people do find out,” he said. “Of course, it’s great to have dreams and aspirations. Right now, my dream and aspiration is to find a cure for cancer and to figure out a way to overcome inequality and the way we have access to healthcare not just in the United States but in the rest of the world.”
Dr. Q is finishing his second book. The rights to his first book “Becoming Dr. Q” was released in 2011 and the rights were picked up by Plan B Production Company owned by Brad Pitt. Netflix is also in talks to produce a second series focused on his travels across the world to perform free surgical procedures in areas without access to medical care.   
“The truly unsung heroes are the doctors that come from all parts of the world and give their heart and soul. The nurses who have no connections to this part of the world and truly need to be recognized. They are doing it so what else can I do to change the world? My role is a catalyzer to inspire other people to change the world,” said Dr. Q.
“I believe strongly in my own heart that if you give your best, the world recognizes and opportunities may open. If it is the right fit, you can pursue those opportunities. I can tell you what I have always done; my best. As a brain surgeon, as a scientist, as a philanthropist for my foundation, I give it my best. At the end of the day, I am not an intellectual. I’m a carpenter of the brain. I’m a plumber of the brain. I’m a mechanic of the brain. That is how I see myself. I’m an average person who likes to work hard and likes to use his hands. Tomorrow something else may open and I’m an explorer. If something opens up in the universe, and it sounds like the right thing to do, you never know.”