2022 Travel Team Feature: Harrison Fellheimer
Operation Walk Pittsburgh’s Mission 2022 is a little over 5 weeks away. 74 travel team members have volunteered to travel to Antigua, Guatemala, for our seventh trip to Obras Sociales del Santo Hermano Pedro, our partner hospital there. These team members will arrive just a few days after the advance team, who will travel ahead to unload cargo, prepare the hospital for surgeries, and meet patients and their families. We are looking forward to being together again, and especially to welcoming first-time travel team members.
Our next team member to be featured in this series is Harrison Fellheimer, a newcomer to the team. Harrison is from Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, a town just outside of Philadelphia. He recently graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a major in Neuroscience and is currently applying to medical schools with the hope of becoming an orthopedic surgeon one day. Currently, he works as a project coordinator at the UPMC Innovation Center, playing an important role in providing bone and joint health educational resources, programs, and tools to people in the Pittsburgh region. Read on to learn more about Harrison and his journey!
Harrison’s main interests include medicine and sports, which are what led him to become interested in applying to medical school and specializing in orthopedics. He has been playing sports for his entire life and played Division 1 men's lacrosse at college. He even played for both the men’s and women’s Division 1 lacrosse teams for a year! Outside of lacrosse, his other hobbies include biking, running, hiking, and playing golf. Through Harrison’s involvement in sports, he has met many orthopedic surgeons, who all had a big impact on this thinking and inspired him to become a surgeon.
At his current job with the UPMC Innovation Center (IC), Harrison has learned that “medicine extends beyond physical health; it’s a network that connects social and spiritual elements.” Since his time at the IC, he has become more interested in blending orthopedics with a career that focuses on patient-centered values. He’s using this gap year before medical school to learn more about the IC’s “Patient-Centered Value System.” This system, a core tool that guides all the IC’s work, is a treatment approach that empowers patients to directly influence their care experiences. The IC’s vision of patient-centered care has motivated him to adopt this care style in his medical learning for the future.
As a member of the Operation Walk Pittsburgh travel team, Harrison’s role will be one of the “humanitarian volunteers.” These team members, not always clinicians, help with important logistical and administrative tasks around the hospital. They make sure supplies are where they are needed, help maintain patient charts and records, and visit with patients and their family members.
Harrison has high expectations for this trip and expressed his excitement to travel. He is especially eager to see how everything, from running supplies to performing surgeries, will be done in a hospital far from home and far from anything he has experienced before. Moreover, he is looking forward to observing and meeting local patients and hearing their personal stories. “It’s exciting,” he told us, “that I’ll have a chance to gain an understanding of how another country’s health system works.” He hopes that during this trip, he can meet and learn from patients and hospital staff in Antigua and gain a better understanding of the factors that affect health and wellbeing an international setting. These experiences, he hopes, should provide a unique and more “global” set of perspectives on medicine as he begins his formal medical training in the United States.
“I am excited to be in a hospital setting and a fast-paced environment, also learning about the surgeries and treatment plans.”
Each travel team member agrees to meet a fundraising goal in order to help Operation Walk Pittsburgh cover the cost of critically needed supplies and equipment for the mission. Harrison kindly asks for donations in order to reach his fundraising goal. Your donations, made to Operation Walk Pittsburgh in Harrison’s name, will directly support patient care by empowering us with the financial resources needed to purchase items like sutures, dressings, medications, IV tubing, implants, and countless other items needed to perform joint replacement surgeries for up to 45 patients. Our donors make these missions possible, as well as the incredible life-changing work that our team accomplishes. Will you help Harrison reach his fundraising goal? Please click below to donate…and be sure to write Harrison’s name in the field that asks if your donation is made in support of a team member’s fundraising goal.