Sean Harbison, MD

Dr. Sean Harbison is a well renowned General Surgeon at the University of Pennsylvania Health System. He performs a variety of surgical procedures at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center which is his home campus to the University of Pennsylvania. Not only is Dr. Harbison an outstanding surgeon he is a native Philadelphian and he was educated in Philadelphia and spent most of his entire professional career within blocks of Broad Street. After earning his Bachelor of Arts degree in Biology from LaSalle College, Sean attended Temple University School of Medicine and completed General Surgery training at The Graduate Hospital and Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. He has served as a faculty Attending Surgeon and Professor of Surgery at Graduate Hospital, Temple University Hospital and recently in the Department of Surgery, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and in the last six years at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center. Other than spending time with his wonderful family, running and surfing, his passion and dedication is to his work- clinical surgery and surgical education. He has been fortunate to teach medical students and surgery residents throughout his career and he has enjoyed serving in leadership roles and participating in helping young physicians grow. Sean Harbison finds education to be THE most enduringly and satisfying part of his own mission as a surgeon. He has been validated by multiple teaching awards over the years but with no formal, rigorous educational training has simply followed intuition and taught how it ‘felt right’. He is highly anticipating participating in the Penn GSE Med Ed Program to learn educational theory and structure, to explore and study further the complex process of teaching and learning to become a physician to our future surgeons of the world.