Debra Holbrook
Forensic Nurse Coordinator, Mercy Medical Center
Adjunct Faculty, Institute for Johns Hopkins School of Nursing
Ms. Holbrook is a graduate of Johns Hopkins School of Radiologic Technology and The Union Memorial Hospital School of Nursing in Baltimore, Maryland. After working in the field of critical care, Ms. Holbrook founded a Forensic Nurse Examiner Program in Delaware that became a model for the United States (US Senate, 2002).
In 2002, she testified on Capitol Hill before a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs on behalf of the Bill that was signed into law in 2005 as the DNA Justice Act. She is the recipient of numerous international awards, including the Delaware Nurse of the year, and the International Association of Forensic Nurses Pioneer Award. Ms. Holbrook has authored grants totaling over 6 million dollars to benefit victims of serious felony crimes against persons and lectures nationally for the Office for Victims of Crime in Washington, DC, educating medical professionals across the country. She has conducted over 200 pediatric and adult SANE educational offerings both nationally and internationally.
Ms. Holbrook has integrated comprehensive forensic practice into the SANE model and her programs have cared for patients of all types of interpersonal violence including domestic, elder, child, institutional, vulnerable populations, gunshots, stabbings, non-accidental poisonings and burns. She has pioneered the use of the Alternative Light Source technology and helped to establish court precedents in strangulation cases in Maryland court systems. She is currently Director of Forensic Nursing at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore which coordinates care for victims of interpersonal violence in all of the hospitals throughout the city of Baltimore.