Emmala Waduge, NP

“I believe every caregiver should be an advocate for their child. Having access to timely, consistent, compassionate and evidenced-based medical care is integral in providing the best possible care for a patient and their family.”

Ryan is a board-certified family nurse practitioner, specializing in enteral feeding tubes and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). She is the project coordinator for Improve Care Now, a quality and research collaborative for IBD patients. She is past president of the Association of Gastroenterology and Nutrition Nurses Association. Ryan also serves as a staff coordinator for the Caregivers Connection Group at Atrium Health.

She has always wanted to help sick kids feel better. Focusing on gastrointestinal diseases is interesting to her because she loves the team approach it takes to manage these diseases.

She has worked on several research studies that focus on diet and care for patients with IBD, along with participating in research about disparities in healthcare.

Ryan earned her graduate degree from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

She and her husband have 5 children between them. They enjoy traveling and spending time together, especially at the house at Lake Norman that they built. She also loves to read fiction novels, primarily with plotlines that are suspenseful and dramatic.