Mitchel B. Harris, MD, is the chief of orthopedic trauma at Brigham and Women's Hospital and a professor of orthopedic surgery at Harvard Medical School. He is also an active member of the Brigham and Women's Comprehensive Spine Center. He serves on the medical staffs of Brigham and Women's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital, both located in Boston. Nationally, he is a member of the Orthopaedic Trauma Association, North American Spine Society and the Cervical Spine Research Society. He serves as the chair of the Governance Committee for NASS, which runs a leadership program. He is both a mentor and the chair of the Leadership Development Committee of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons.
Dr. Harris has won numerous awards over the course of his career, most recently the 2014 AAOS Achievement Award and the 2013 Charles D. Ray Research Award for Best Clinical Paper presented by the International Society for the Advancement of Spine Surgery. He is a passionate educator and has been awarded "best teaching" awards at each academic institution that he has worked in. He is actively involved in research and his current projects include innovations to enhance care pathway for patients with fragility fractures and the optimal treatment pathway for epidural abscesses. He serves as an ad-hoc reviewer for The Spine Journal, Journal of Orthopedic Trauma and Journal of Trauma.
"The biggest change in spine surgery is the increasing emphasis on patient-reported outcomes. New Patient Reported Outcome Measures are being developed such that the medical community will be able to quantify how well patients respond to different surgical procedures irrespective of the technique and X-rays," says Dr. Harris. "Spine centers that have the ability to monitor and analyze patient-reported outcomes will ultimately have the information to change the way spine care is delivered. These multidisciplinary centers will become the preferred treatment centers for both operative and non-operative care. This patient-centered interaction is what I find most satisfying about my profession. Ultimately these outcome measures will provide the spinal community with the tools to determine which treatment pathways lead to a predictable improvement in the quality of life."
Dr. Harris received his medical degree from the University of Illinois College of Medicine in Chicago. He completed a residency in orthopedic surgery at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H. He also completed two international fellowships — one in orthopedic spine and trauma at the University of Toronto Sunnybrook Health Science Center in Canada and a second in orthopedic surgery at the Queen's Medical Centre in England.
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