Bolman, R Morton 'Chip', MD

R. Morton “Chip” Bolman III, MDDr. Bolman is a fourth-generation physician from Indiana, USA. He attended college at Williams College, in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and medical school at St. Louis University School of Medicine, in St. Louis, Missouri. He completed training in General Surgery at Duke University, and in Cardiac and Thoracic Surgery at the University of Minnesota. Bolman rose through the ranks of academic surgery, first at the University of Minnesota, and later at Washington University School of Medicine and Barnes Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri. His main surgical interests were in the area of heart and heart-lung transplantation, where he did important research on the immunologic management of patients following heart transplants, and in the area of complex adult heart surgery. His later career focus was on surgery of the thoracic aorta. 

Dr. Bolman had the opportunity to be Chief of the Division of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery at the University of Minnesota from 1989-2005. In this capacity, he was responsible for the training of a new generation of cardiac surgeons. He held the C. Walton and Richard C. Lillehei Chair in Cardiac Surgery at the University of Minnesota during this tenure. Bolman then became Chief of Cardiac Surgery at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a principal teaching hospital of Harvard University, in Boston, Massachusetts, serving there from 2005-2015. In 2006, at the invitation of the Rwanda Minister of Health and Dr. Paul Farmer, Dr. Bolman and his wife, Ceeya Patton-Bolman, created Team Heart, a non-Governmental organization dedicated to the establishment of sustainable cardiac surgery in Rwanda. 

Team Heart began operating in Rwanda in 2008, and brought a surgical development team each year until 2020 to identify and perform surgery upon Rwandan patients with rheumatic heart disease and severe heart failure. In May, 2019, Maurice Musoni, MD, a Rwandan surgeon, returned from training in South Africa as a fully-trained cardio-thoracic surgeon, the first in Rwanda. 

Beginning in February, 2020, Team Heart switched its focus to mentoring Dr. Musoni and helping him build a team at King Faisal Hospital in Kigali. In November, 2022, Dr. Musoni and his team performed the first open heart operations in Rwanda with a team made up exclusively of Rwandan surgeons, nurses, and perfusionists. Dr. and Mrs. Bolman remain committed to the establishment of sustainable cardiac surgery for and by the citizens of Rwanda.