TCU School of Medicine and The Yale Club of Fort Worth Host Music and Medicine


Stuart D. Flynn, M.D., Founding Dean of TCU School of Medicine, was the featured speaker at The Yale Club of Fort Worth's Music and Medicine event.

By Prescotte Stokes III

Photo Credit: Prescotte Stokes III

FORT WORTH – The TCU School of Medicine collaborated with The Yale Club of Fort Worth on a discussion about medical education and the growing influence the medical school is having on health care in Fort Worth.

Stuart D. Flynn, M.D., Founding Dean of the TCU School of Medicine, was the featured guest at The Yale Club of Fort Worth‘s Music and Medicine event. The chat with Dean Flynn was followed by music from Yale’s The Society and Orpheus and Bacchus, the longest operating all-undergraduate a cappella group in the nation.

The event was held inside TCU’s Kelly Center and was sponsored by Brant Martin, a board member of the Yale Club of Fort Worth and senior partner at Wicks, Philips, Gould & Martin, LLP.

“It’s good for TCU, it’s good for Fort Worth and it’s good for Yale in terms of recruiting,” Martin said. “I brought two of my children because I want them to see there’s more out there that they can aspire too. It’s good for all parties involved.”

Martin, a Fort Worth native, added that bringing the YCFW together with TCU is a good community connection.

“Anytime we can bring more exposure to TCU and the great things they are doing in Fort Worth it’s good for everybody involved,” Martin said.

Dean Flynn, who spent 20 years of his career in medical education as a professor of pathology and surgery at Yale School of Medicine, gave the crowd insight into what it takes to create a new approach to medical education and create future physicians that are knowledgeable and empathetic to their patients.

“I found what he had to say absolutely inspiring,” said Kathleen Galloway, Yale Club of Fort Worth President. “To hear him talk about his passion for developing a medical school and how he cares about the students just makes me so excited about this medical school and his leadership of it.”

The YCFW packed about 60 people inside a ballroom at the TCU Kelly Center that included Fort Worthians, young and old. Dean Flynn talked about how important medical schools are in jump-starting medical innovation in large cities, such as Fort Worth.

“This was important because there still is a lot that the community wants to know about what’s happening (in health care),” Martin said. “He explained what it means to be in the stage that TCU and the medical school are in and I found that to be informative.”

Dean Flynn talked in great detail about The Compassionate Practice®, a innovative communication curriculum based in the disciplines of theater, narrative medicine, journalism, and population health. Community members had many questions for Dean Flynn about the importance of humanities training for future physicians.

Mei Mei Edwards, a third-year medical student at TCU School of Medicine, attended the event with a few of her classmates. She was intrigued about how important the humanities aspect of their medical training was to community members.

“Going out into hospitals I can see that these patients want more from me than the diagnosis and the treatment plan,” Edwards said. “They want to feel like they’re heard and to be treated like a person and not just a medical ailment.”

After the informative discussion with Dean Flynn, the community members in attendance were treated to more than an hour of soulful renditions of popular songs from the early 1900s to today’s hits such as, Olivia Rodrigo’s, ‘Good 4 U,’ from The Society and Orpheus and Bacchus.

“Our primary mission is to be active in the Fort Worth community and create new connections,” Galloway said. “This event was a great way of connecting our Yale community in Fort Worth with TCU and their commitment to this city.”