Creating a Safety Net in Protection of Vulnerable Persons

Join the ElderSAFE Center and BC REST for their annual World Elder Abuse Awareness Day webinar!

This presentation will define an inter-disciplinary process for identification of elders who are trafficked or victims of abuse, neglect or maltreatment using medical forensic teams.  Mercy’s fully mobile Forensics team responds to and assists case workers and teams in provision of forensic medical interviews, evidentiary examinations and support for recognizing abuse from other forms of bodily trauma.

Objectives:

• Participants will understand trafficking of elders in our communities.
• Participants will engage in meaningful dialogue to create interdisciplinary teams as a safety net for elders.
• Participants will define the roles of Forensic Nursing as part of the safety and care team for elders who are exploited.

Speaker:

Debra S. Holbrook, MSN, RN, SANE-A, SANE-P, FNE A/P, AFN-C, DF-AFN, FAAN

Holbrook attended The Union Memorial Hospital School of Nursing, in Baltimore, Maryland and completed both undergrad and graduate studies through the Wilmington University.  After working in the field of critical care, Holbrook founded a Forensic Nurse Examiner Program in Delaware that became a model of the United States (US Senate Subcommittee / Biden, 2002).

In 2002 she testified on Capital Hill before a Senate Judicial 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 ANCC Magnet International Nurse of the Year, the Delaware Nurse of the year, the International Association of Forensic Nurses Pioneer Award, the 2014 Most Influential Marylanders in Healthcare, Distinguished Fellow – Academy of Forensic Nursing, and the prestigious Fellow American Academy of Nursing.

She has authored grants totaling over 11 million dollars to benefit victims of major person’s crimes and lectures nationally for the Office for Victims of Crime, educating medical professionals across the country. She has conducted over 200 pediatric and adult SANE educational offerings both nationally and internationally.

Holbrook has integrated comprehensive forensic practice into the Generalist model and her Programs have cared for all patients of interpersonal violence across the lifespan. She has pioneered the use of the Alternate Light Source in strangulation cases and set precedence in national court systems and founded the Baltimore City Blue Dot Human Trafficking Initiative.  She is President Elect of the Academy of Forensic Nursing and is currently Director Forensic Nursing at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore which coordinates care to victims of interpersonal violence for all hospitals in Baltimore City.