Fort Worth Feels Like Home

Dr. Terry McCarthy, former chief of staff for Texas Health Harris Methodist Fort Worth, and Chair of Emergency Medicine for the TCU Burnett School of Medicine, grew up at Texas Health Fort Worth. His first encounter was as a surgical orderly, and he returned after medical school and residency to grow his impressive medical and professional career.

“Texas Health Harris Methodist Fort Worth is very near and dear to my heart, and I've done every job known to man in the hospital. Before med school, I was an orderly in the surgery department, a phlebotomist, and medical technologist in the lab,” he says. “After I completed my residency, I interviewed a lot of places, but this hospital was clearly head and shoulders above the rest, and the best possible place to be. I've been back for 26 years now.”

Dr. McCarthy’s long-term affiliation has provided him with a front row seat to the many expansion projects at the hospital, which he has actively participated in financially and professionally. He fondly recalls the friendly fundraising competition during the hospital’s campaign to build the Harris Heart Center in the Klabzuba Tower and expand the Marion Emergency Care Center. “The cardiology group gave a substantial donation to the hospital for the Harris Heart Center. So, when the hospital planned to expand the emergency department, the head of the our group came to all of us and said, ‘We've got to beat their donation.’ The game was on! We all signed up to give a decent amount of money every month out of our paychecks for five years. At the end, we donated a substantial amount of money and we did beat the cardiologists.”

Dr. McCarthy regularly supports several other causes within the Texas Health system, including the Nursing Excellence Fund and the Wall of Life Fund, a wall within the Fort Worth hospital created to honor and represent the names of organ donors, living donors, and transplant recipients.

“To think of the number of lives that have been changed for good or for the better in this facility is astonishing,” he says. “Giving back is just a way to express my gratitude for giving me a wonderful place to have practiced for the last 26 years. It’s just such a different kind of place to work with a first-rate, compassionate culture.”