COL (RET) Gwyn Parris-Atwell, DNP, FNP-BC, CEN, FAEN
Lifetime Achievement Award
COL (RET) Gwyn Parris-Atwell, DNP, FNP-BC, CEN, FAEN
Honors a nurse whose career achievements reflect dedicated service, accomplishments and/or contributions to emergency nursing that have value to emergency nursing beyond the recipient’s lifetime.
Gwyn Parris-Atwell credits her inspiration to join the U.S. Army to attending an ENA state conference early in her career and meeting past ENA President Peggy McMahon, a Vietnam combat veteran. Parris-Atwell served a combined 31 years in the Army and Air Force with five deployments including combat tours to Iraq and Afghanistan. She retired in 2022 as a colonel from the Delaware Air National Guard, where she served as the Medical Group Commander. Currently, she is an occupational medicine nurse practitioner at Jefferson Health, where she enjoys being able to mentor new nurses.
She was an ENA General Assembly delegate for more than a decade among the many ways she has been involved in ENA. She has been a poster reviewer and served on the Lantern Award Committee. She held similar roles with New Jersey ENA focused on judging poster presentations, awards and conference planning, and she served as the council’s 2010 president.
For 35 years, she was a TNCC and ENPC provider, course director or faculty. Parris-Atwell is a trustee at her local college, which offers both LPN and RN programs.