Having always enjoyed connecting with people and helping others, Taryn L. Amberson, RN, knew that she wanted to be a nurse from an early age. First earning a Bachelor of Science in nursing from Grand Canyon University in 2013, she embarked on her career as an emergency nurse that same year. She went on to obtain a Master of Science in nursing from Grand Canyon University in 2019, during which time she was also employed as a nurse with Scripps Health in San Diego. In 2020, following a move to Hawaii with her husband, a diver in the U.S. Navy, she joined the Pali Momi Medical Center as an emergency nurse, where her duties include triage and assessing and checking in new patients.
Ms. Amberson is also an active member of the Emergency Nurses Association, where she serves as an editor fellow for the Journal of Emergency Nursing and was the author of a nine-part disaster preparedness curriculum. Recently, she was sworn in as an officer with the National Disaster Medical System, an organization that provides personnel, equipment and other supplies to regions in need. Ms. Amberson and her team are on call several months of the year, with their most recently on call service being to a hospital in Minnesota struggling with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Attributing much of her success to her strong internal motivation, along with several excellent mentors, Ms. Amberson stands out in her field for her sense of duty and her drive to shape and improve the field of emergency health care. Looking toward the future, she intends to continue to develop her expertise in disaster research and has plans to return to school to earn a Doctor of Philosophy. She also hopes to become involved in health care policy on local and federal levels in order to improve the quality of patient care and staff satisfaction.
Living her life by the motto, “Be the change that you want to see in the world,” Ms. Amberson considers her most notable achievement to be the education curriculum that she created for the Emergency Nurses Association and she has toyed with the idea of perhaps doing work in education later on in her career. For her excellence, she has been recognized with a number of honors and accolades. Most notable of these are the Emergency Department Nurse of the Year Award from Scripps Memorial Hospital in 2019 and when she was inducted into ENA Connection’s 20 Under 40 with the Emergency Nurses Association in 2021.