By Austin Ramsey
Messenger-Inquirer
MCLEAN COUNTY, Ky. — Marietta Worth is the new McLean County Emergency Medical Services director.
McLean Fiscal Court chose Worth on March 15 to replace longtime director Brian Short, who accepted another job earlier this month. Worth, who has been working in emergency health care for 30 years, is a critical care paramedic and a level-3 state instructor. She has years of experience coordinating education programs, managing paramedics, and serving both in the field and sky.
She’s been with McLean County EMS on and off for about 13 years. She ended a short stint as county director in 2006 when she accepted a position with Air Evac Lifeteam 10 in Hopkinsville. In 2009, however, she returned and has served the county ever since.
Worth said she has a passion for education and swift, accurate care. She said she believes in doing everything she can to serve the people of McLean County to the best of her ability. Her experiences, she said, have prepared her for the challenges ahead.
She is a qualified instructor in several areas including basic and advanced cardiovascular life support. Education, she said, is a powerful tool in the medical world, because, for professionals, it can sometimes mean the difference between a patient’s life or death. Worth spent many years coordinating education programs at McLean County EMS, and she said she plans to continue emphasizing that work.
As director, she also worked with the Homeland Security Task Force in Kentucky, which led her to participate in a joint-county team of paramedics who traveled to Houston, Texas, in the aftermath of Hurricane Rita in 2005. There, she helped improve response time in the metro area as the city dealt with the crippling effects of Hurricane Katrina refugees and a massive stormfront.
Opportunities like that helped her grow as a paramedic and as a person, she said.
“Just seeing the cooperation and the things that can be done was amazing,” she said. I learned a lot but so did (other paramedic teams). The pattern that we had for Kentucky homeland security is now being implemented in Texas. It was wonderful to be part of that.”
Paramedic work is a grueling sometimes thankless job, Worth said, but it’s something to which she’s always found herself drawn. Originally, she worked as a veterinary technician, but when she went to school in Bowling Green for medical care training, she intentionally narrowed her focus on emergency services.
“A lot of the people I worked with -- my friends and colleagues in school -- went on to nursing. I don’t know why, but I just didn’t. I had so many opportunities to go in a different direction, but I love what I do. You have to have a passion for this, and I know I do.”
McLean County EMS offers the highest level of immediate care in the county, and because of the large geographic area they serve, paramedics are sometimes with patients for extended periods of time. It’s important, precious time, she said, and paramedics have to be well trained and equipped to handle whatever they encounter.
The small county atmosphere can also mean fewer calls, Worth said. That’s why the ambulance service only has three ambulances in the squad. But every call counts, she said, because the clock is ticking.
“Those patients are our family,” she said. “They pay for us, so we’re obligated to provide the best care possible for them. Because of the long drive from here to a hospital in Owensboro, we can end up keeping a patient for sometimes an extra 10 minutes, but those 10 minutes can make a lot of difference.”
Worth said former Director Brian Short has taken McLean EMS a long way, but she wants to go further. In addition to implementing more internal and external education programs, she said she is prepared to adjust the paramedic schedule in the county to allow for advanced life support crews working 24 hours a day, seven days a week. She called it a step forward for the service that will better prepare employees and better serve the county.
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