Local nurse earns singular honour
By Lethbridge Herald on June 18, 2025.
Alejandra Pulido-Guzman
Lethbridge Herald
A local nurse is the sole Canadian being inducted into the Academy of Emergency Nursing by the Emergency Nurses Association this year.
Dawn Peta, a clinical instructor with the rural south zone, a certified emergency nurse and a registered nurse, joins four other inductees for 2025. Of all the 215 emergency nurses inducted into the AEN since it was established by the Emergency Nurses Association in 2004, Peta is only the second Canadian.
The five nurses inducted this year have made sustained and enduring contributions to the specialty of emergency nursing.
Peta is an advocate for education, especially for nurses in rural communities, and for raising the voices of emergency nurses worldwide. She spearheaded the first Canadian Advocacy Day at Parliament to raise awareness for issues affecting emergency nurses, has worked toward a global triage assessment standard, and has taken an innovative approach to domestic violence screening that increased support for survivors.
“I created an advocacy event here in Canada based on their day on the hill, and we walked on Parliament last June for emergency issues,” says Peta.
She’s the past president for the National Emergency Nursing Association (NENA), which is the Canadian equivalent of the ENA. ENA is a global organization with 50,000 members and a head office in the United States. NENA has approximately 1,200 members. Peta is currently the president of NENA Alberta.
She says that the walk on Parliament Hill was meant to go beyond the day-to-day advocacy that emergency department patients see from their nurses at their bedside.
“Because we see wrongs,” says Peta. “We see emergency overcrowding, we see staff shortages that are impacting patient care, so how are we going to fix that? We can’t just complain to a manager and say this is wrong.”
Nurses have a particularly powerful role in advocacy, she says, because they are the front line, and they are the most trusted profession in the world for the last 23 years.
“The only year we lost it was in 2001 when 9-11 happened, for the firefighters as they should,” says Peta. “But otherwise we are the most trusted profession in the world, so I think that gives us a lot of power and a voice that we can use for our patients and their families.”
Peta has been a nurse for 31 years, with the last 17 of them spent in critical care. She worked in the Intensive Care Unit for five years, and in the Emergency Department for 15 years. In January, she began a full-time job as a clinic instructor after teaching part-time for 11 years before that.
She teaches all the certification courses for emergency, which include the trauma course, emergency nurse pediatric course, advance life support for adults and children, neonatal resuscitation, and fetal health surveillance.
Peta, a mother of five grown children, says she needed to fill the gap when they left home, and realized that getting more involved in making changes helped her to deal with it.
“I saw both of my parents die in the health care system,” she says, “and I had a lot of regret about the things that I should’ve done. So I thought how can I be that patient advocate for people who don’t have family members that are medically trained?”
She believes the United States does that very well, because they have patient advocates within their emergency departments while Canada doesn’t.
“And I think that has such a profound effect on a patient’s journey. So that’s the legacy I am leaving behind: patient advocacy, but also advocating for accessible health care.”
Peta says she approaches every problem with the goal of fixing it, which is the approach she’s taking to challenges within the health care system that are leaving many nurses feeling burned out.
“I’m only one person so I can only do so much,” she says, “but maybe if I start and I lead the change or practice by example, it’s going to inspire others to want to be or do the same.”
Recognition by ENA went a long way toward making her feel like she’s having an impact, and Peta admits she cried happy tears when she found out she was being inducted.
“It’s feels like there is a purpose, sometimes you feel at a loss,” she says. “Why am I doing this? So this is the reward…and kickstarts me to do more.”
And being one of only 215 people in the entire world inducted into the Academy of Emergency Nursing was an inspiration as well.
“I feel like it pays tribute to my passion and it inspires others to achieve it.”
Peta will be inducted along with her other new fellows at a formal dinner during Emergency Nursing 2025 in New Orleans this September.
25-24
Congrats on the award PETA and all Service as an experienced, dedicated nurse.
Recognition and overwhelming gratitude to the first responders, ICU doctors, and nurses that locallly saved me from certain death and restores life at Chinook Regional Hospital, Lethbridge.
There is a multitude of additional nurses, doctors, nurses aid, physical therapy and rehab individuals who pour their hearts out. Administration and food preparation is 1’st Class. Thanks also to many volunteers.
A forever grateful individual from Lethbridge.