USD Magazine Spring 2026

TOREROS MAKING WAVES

and served as a community faith nurse. She has also started to share her thoughts on “working in the healing field,” most recently in her newly published memoir, Between Wounded and Well: Lessons in Healing . “The memoir begins with the life of a 14-year-old mother with a dream of becoming a nurse, and she’s told, ‘You can’t,’” she explained. “It’s my story. It’s how I persevered and became a nurse. I outlined the story according to the four stages of physical wound healing, and I used it as a metaphor for emotional and spiritual healing. I’ve been told it’s a mostly joyous and inspirational story.” Palmer’s memoir began as a way to help her “understand our past does not have to define us. We can break patterns of dysfunction.” From there, Palmer realized the larger implications and the impact her story could have for others, made even more poignant as she wrote the memoir during the COVID-19 global health pandemic. “I wrote it to inspire people to never give up hope, even in what seems like the most dire of circumstances,” she said. “You’ve got to have hope to live another day. I think my book shows, against all obstacles, that if you don’t give up hope, you can go farther than you thought you could. You can overcome more than you thought you could. In that process, you build resilience.” Using the science of “tissue healing as a metaphor for emotional and spiritual recovery,” Palmer’s memoir weaves together her scientific profession with her life journey in a deeply personal way, inviting readers to reflect on their own lives. “My first stage of healing is called awareness,” she explained. “In wound healing, it’s awareness that somebody’s bleeding. You have to stop the bleeding. That’s the first step — the awareness that you’re wounded, that something’s wrong, and an awareness of your reason for living another day, or your purpose. Without a purpose there is no motivation to get help and focus on self-care.”

A HEALER’S JOURNEY When Debra Palmer ’87 (MA), ’10 (DNP), ’18 (PhD) first moved to San Diego in the 1980s for her husband’s naval career, she didn’t know that the University of San Diego would become an essential part of her life story. As her husband settled in his new role, she turned her focus to building her own path — in nursing. While she was initially drawn to the Hahn School of Nursing and Health Science’s nurse practitioner program, it was the family she found at USD that led her to return more than two decades later for the Doctor of Nursing Practice program, followed by a PhD with a focus in nursing. Palmer had been eager to pursue a career in nursing since her early years, with her interest reaching new levels when she became a mother at age 14. “I had three younger siblings, and my youngest brother was only nine months older than my son,” she said. “As a caregiver, a young babysitter so to speak, I had to pitch in and help my mom and dad. We were from a poor family, so I became a caregiver at a very young age — and I sensed a lot of dysfunction in my home,” she said. “When I would see nurses or read about them, I felt they knew something I didn’t, something that might help me have a less dysfunctional life. So, I was drawn to nursing as a way of healing myself.”

Throughout her career, Palmer has taught, worked as a clinician in hospitals and clinics, advanced the development of the orthopedic nurse practitioner subspecialty

Photo: Shoey Sindel

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