My name is Aaron Joseph Harper, and I'm from Rochester, New York
What I wanted to do when I grew up was to become a fighter pilot in the Marine Corps.
During my deployment to Desert Storm the Iraqis were close enough to us
and they would launch 16 foot long missiles at us or rockets. And during one of those attacks
I ruptured a disc in my lower back and wound up being in a wheelchair.
When I was told that I would have to be medically retired, it was really devastating.
I didn't know how to handle that news. I got to change my dream.
And how do you do that you know? How did he just come up with a new dream?
About five years ago
Carolina's Healthcare System didn't have a veteran strategy. I got tasked with trying to figure out how to
put this in place for this massive health care system.
We had to determine what were our shortcomings, and one of our shortcomings was not having the ability to translate skills.
The first thing I told them was you need to hire an NCO - a noncommissioned officer -
because if you want to build something and execute on something, it is the
noncommissioned officer in the military setting that actually does the work. Ultimately ended up hiring Aaron Harper a Marine Corps NCO.
What I do for Carolina's Healthcare System, I'm the manager of Military and Veterans Affairs.
Our job is to help you bridge that military experience and then use it to your advantage
into the civilian corporate sector.
There is a pretty big adjustment, so you go from getting shot at or not getting shot at to coming here,
and normal life so to speak.
We're providing that hope - here's the next chapter.
Aaron knows the culture of Carolina's Healthcare System, and he's able to find those
intersections for the Veteran and for Carolina's Healthcare System.
For the Marine Corps, you'd say logistics. Here we say materials management, so a lot of it is just
translating the word. What else did you do as an officer? Were you in charge of people? Did you have a budget?
Let's take those skills too. Let's make sure that this is a whole packet because we can certainly use your skills,
we just got to get a rewrite on it.
I met Sergeant Ben Bruckheimer in 2006 when we were deployed. We were in Baghdad together. He was a
Surgical Technician. I was an Orthopedic Trauma Surgeon so we worked together.
September 13th 2009 - my very first IED took me out of the fight and
unfortunately I ended up on the OR table instead of being on the side of it.
But it wasn't for a few years later that it finally something just flipped in my head or I look at things that a whole
180 from then now.
I actually recruited him to come here with Aaron Harper's help, with Human Resources here, to come on in and work with us here in the operating room.
The teamwork concept of CHS welcomed him in and really made him part of the team.
I love the rush of feeling patient compression and all hell is breaking loose, but you've mentally prepared for it,
you know what to do because you've done it so many times before.
So it's good to give back and feel like I have a mission again or a purpose.
The National Economic Council says the healthcare in the United States is gonna be short a million jobs and
here we have a bunch of military medical professionals with decades of combat experience
who are coming out of the military.
They're getting pushed into jobs that they're way overqualified for,
and so Carolina's looked at this and said we want people who can operate in a complex environment
because that's what healthcare is. Well who better than
Military Veterans.These are the type of people that we want
solving problems with us.
We want to take advantage of the leadership skills that you have, those things that you learn. I can deal with stress, I can deal
with multi parts moving at the same time. I can deal with hundreds of people on the field and keep them safe,
so I want that here. I want that out of anybody here. The mission in the Marine Corps,
you know take care of our country. The mission for here to take care of our patients and our teammates.
As I work with other employers that recognize veterans, it's about respect
respecting service and
respecting sacrifice and providing them
opportunity to continue to serve at the highest level.
The new dream now is that I get to help military members and veterans and their families.
That I get to be a part of that. That's dream B. Dream part two and I get to live it.