Furtick Retires from NMMC After 27 Years
Coworkers honored Dianne Furtick with a retirement celebration Nov. 6.
Dianne Furtick, trauma registrar coordinator in the Emergency Department, recently retired after 27 years of service at North Mississippi Medical Center.
Furtick grew up in Bolivar County near Cleveland and graduated from the former Rosedale High School in 1974. She stayed home with her young children for several years, then became a secretary at Joe Barnes Vocational Center in Rosedale. In the evenings, she attended Mississippi Delta Community College in Moorhead and became a Registered Emergency Medical Technician-Intermediate in 1989. She worked as an EMT for the City of Rosedale for three years, volunteering in the role until a paid position became available.
In 1993, she married Jim Furtick, moved to Tupelo and joined the NMMC staff as an EMT with Ambulance Services. She completed the paramedic program at Itawamba Community College in 1996 and later became a preceptor for new paramedic students joining Ambulance Services. She continued to work part-time on the ambulance when she became a flight paramedic with CareFlight in 1998.
She transferred in 2002 to her current role in the Trauma Department, where she has been responsible for tracking and reporting the hospital’s trauma data. She has served on Itawamba Community College’s Paramedic Advisory Board since 1998 and on the Mississippi Department of Health Trauma Registry Sub-Committee since 2002.
Furtick was one of the original Pathfinders for the annual “Imagine the Possibilities” Career Expo for area eighth-graders. She built a robot named “No Brainer” from cardboard boxes to promote seatbelt safety and started seatbelt checks in the employee parking garages, as well as doing injury prevention programs in local schools. She was named as NMMC’s Employee of the Month in January 2012.
“I enjoy taking care of the sick and injured—that’s really my passion,” Furtick said. “I also enjoyed working with the school kids and helping with community events on injury prevention.”
Now that she has retired, Furtick plans to spend more time with her family, which includes daughter Hannah (Michael) Aguzzi and 13-year-old grandson, Colby Dreher, of Cleveland; and son Carey (Holly) Estes and 10-month-old grandson, Carey, of Knoxville, Tennessee. Her husband, Jim, passed away in April.
She looks forward to gardening – both vegetables and flowers—as well as doing yardwork and fishing. She also enjoys crafts and recently began experimenting with watercolor painting.
