About
The person behind the instruments, and why they needed to exist.
Eric Whitney, DO
Dr. Eric Whitney is a board-certified neurosurgeon and the creator of the PCRES (Post-Craniotomy Recovery Experience Scale) and Pre-CERS (Pre-Craniotomy Emotional Readiness Screen). He developed these instruments from direct clinical observation of hundreds of craniotomy patients whose emotional recovery was invisible to the standard tools available in neurosurgical follow-up.
The pattern was consistent: the MRI showed complete resection, the neurological exam was non-focal, and the patient was struggling in ways that no one was asking about. Identity disruption, neurofatigue, grief for lost abilities, a disconnect between what the medical team saw and what the patient was living — none of it was being measured, because no instrument existed to measure it.
The PCRES was built to close that gap. Not as a replacement for existing screening tools, but as a complement that captures what they were never designed to ask.
Still You: Emotional Recovery After Brain Surgery
Still You is the companion book to the PCRES — a free resource written for patients and families navigating the emotional reality of brain surgery recovery. It covers what to expect when the scans look good but you don’t feel like yourself, and provides a framework for understanding the recovery experience that medicine doesn’t typically discuss.
Why These Instruments Needed to Exist
The PHQ-9 asks about depression. The GAD-7 asks about anxiety. The MoCA tests cognition in a quiet office. None of them ask: Do you still feel like yourself? Does your medical progress match how you actually feel? Are you grieving abilities you’ve lost? Do you feel heard by your medical team?
These are not peripheral concerns. For post-craniotomy patients, they are the substance of recovery. The PCRES and Pre-CERS were built to ask the questions that matter most to the people living through brain surgery — and to give clinicians structured, actionable information about domains that existing instruments cannot capture.
Both instruments are free, require no license, and will remain that way permanently.
Contact
For questions about the PCRES, Pre-CERS, validation collaboration, or clinical implementation, use the contact form on the Get Involved page.