He studied medicine in Zagreb (Croatia), in Great Britain and in the United States.
In the Medical Centre Ljubljana (Slovenia), he formed and trained a team of surgeons that has become world-wide known after the surgery of amputated extremities.
In 1984, he was the first ever to perform temporary ectopic banking of the amputated hand to the axilla to salvage the mutilated upper extremity, which he re-transplanted back to the receiving stump two months later.
He and his wife Vesna died in a car crash on the road from Zagreb to Ljubljana.
The Marko Godina Travelling Fellowship to provide a scholarship for a visiting plastic surgery scholar to visit the centers of their choice including Department of Plastic Surgery and Burns in Ljubljana has been named after him.