Personal Profile
Previously Consultant Neurologist at Charing Cross Hospital and Honorary Senior Lecturer at Imperial College London (2003 - 2013), Dr Rakowicz is highly experienced in the delivery and organisation of a consultant-led neurological service.
His general neurological practice covers all aspects of headache, migraine dizziness, epilepsy, fits and funny turns, memory problems. He provides a regional specialist service as one of the senior neuromuscular team at University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust where he sees patients with peripheral neuropathy, muscle disease, motor neurone disease, diseases of the spinal cord and cauda equina.
Dr Rakowicz limits his medicolegal practice to small numbers of complex, high value claims. He draws on his experience, an ability to grasp and articulate the essence of a problem, and to present the information in a way that can be readily understood by an intelligent lay person.
Born in Dulwich, Dr Rakowicz graduated from King’s College London in 1990 with degrees in Medicine (MB BS) and Neuroscience (BSc, 1st class honours). After appointments at the National Hospital for Neurology & Neurosurgery, Queen Square (Neurology & Neurophysiology); The Maudsley Hospital (Psychiatry); and the Norfolk & Norwich Hospital (Neurology), he completed his neurology training and research in Cambridge and Washington University in St Louis, MO, USA.
While in Cambridge he wrote with Professor John Hodges the original Addenbrooke’s Cognitive Examination, recently revised (ACE-3), which has rapidly become a reference assessment tool, used in Memory Clinics worldwide. In 2001 he was awarded a PhD by the University of Cambridge for his research into Motor Neurone Disease.
He is one of the few UK neurologists to have completed a formal subspecialist training programme in Neuromuscular Diseases, for which he travelled to one of the top US units (Professor Alan Pestronk) at Washington University in St Louis, MO, USA (http://neuromuscular.wustl.edu/).
Dr Rakowicz was an examiner for the Royal College of Physicians’ Specialty Certificate Examination in Neurology from 2007 to 2019.
He was one of two adult neurologists on the NICE Suspected Neurological Conditions guideline (NG127; 2019), which provides a unique symptom-based reference helping doctors working in acute medicine and primary care to better recognise and refer patients with neurological symptoms.
Dr Rakowicz is married with three children with whom he walks, cycles and makes music. He speaks Polish to native speaker standard and is fluent in French and German.
