Making the journey from middle school band teacher to medical student, Moises Correa, a first-year medical student at University of North Texas Health Science Center’s Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine, sees a connection between playing in an orchestra and practicing medicine.
“There’s the active and the quick decision-making component,” he said. “When you’re playing your instrument, you’re doing so many things. You’re not only keeping time rhythmically, but you’re actively reading … making sure you’re pressing the right buttons at the right time. You’re also listening across the room, not only to the person next to you, but maybe to the instruments that are across the hall from you.
“If you mess up your part, everybody’s going to draw their attention to that one person,” he told Texas Medicine Today. “There’s a lot of accountability.”
Mr. Correa is the most recent winner of the Texas Medical Association’s Special Funds Foundation North Texas Specialty Physicians Medical Student Scholarship. Established through a generous grant from North Texas Specialty Physicians in 2023, it’s available to first-year medical students who reside or have resided in Johnson, Parker, or Tarrant counties. The $10,000 award renews for three consecutive years, for a total award of $40,000, as long as the recipient remains enrolled as a full-time Texas medical student prior to reapplication.
TMA President-Elect Bradford Holland, MD, who chaired a subcommittee reviewing the scholarship applications, was impressed with Mr. Correa and his unconventional path to pursuing a career in medicine.
“He’s a truly remarkable young man who did rise above an extremely impressive group of peers, yet he stood out as someone we wanted to recognize and honor, certainly very deserving of this scholarship award,” said Dr. Holland.
It was a desire to serve that enabled Mr. Correa’s switch from education to medicine.
“My passion in life is service – giving back to the communities that supported me when I had so little growing up,” Mr. Correa, now 29, wrote in his application essay.
“I was gravitating toward wanting to be part of the medical community,” he explained to Texas Medicine Today. “I started volunteering at children’s hospitals, doing a lot of volunteering events, and I was just falling in love with them. I missed the sciences.”
His awareness of medicine’s importance came from a life-changing event when he was in middle school; his father became physically disabled resulting from a work accident falling from a water tower.
“Our whole life turned upside down, and we went through a few years of a lot of changes with him,” including cranial and spinal injuries, Mr. Correa shared about his father. As physicians helped his father regain the ability to walk, Mr. Correa was inspired to practice medicine.
“It’s been such a cool thing seeing physicians help people at their greatest need,” Mr. Correa said. “I would love to be that person to [help] when somebody’s in need.”
He currently volunteers at Mercy Clinic, a free clinic based in Fort Worth, and still stays active in music education, teaching lessons at Haltom High School. He also gets weekly reminders of how music and medicine connect, playing with the Fort Worth Medical Orchestra.
The North Texas Specialty Physicians Medical Student Scholarship, offered by the TMA Special Funds Foundation, is one of five different scholarship programs that TMA’s Office of Trust Fund Administration administers. Together, the scholarship programs constitute an important facet of the work TMA and its affiliated organizations do to develop the next generation of physicians.
“We need to be wholly dedicated to continuing to have the best and the brightest students matriculate into medicine, and that doesn’t just happen passively,” Dr. Holland said. “It does take encouragement on many different fronts and many different levels,” touting scholarships as a way to “support someone financially who deserves to be supported, having their trip in medicine encouraged by TMA and its affiliated organizations.”
Learn more about
TMA Special Funds Foundation scholarship programs plus
medical student loan options.
Phil West
Associate Editor
(512) 370-1394
phil.west[at]texmed[dot]org
Phil West is a writer and editor whose publications include the Los Angeles Times, Seattle Times, Austin American-Statesman, and San Antonio Express-News. He earned a BA in journalism from the University of Washington and an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin’s James A. Michener Center for Writers. He lives in Austin with his wife, children, and a trio of free-spirited dogs.