Joann Brooks, MSN, BS, RN, CNML, still remembers the moment that set her on the path to nursing.
She was almost five years old when her grandmother, dying from colon cancer, was briefly brought down to a hospital lobby so the grandchildren could see her. Children were not allowed into patient rooms at the time. Brooks recalls the look in her grandmother’s eyes and the unmistakable pain she saw there.
“I just remember thinking that I wanted to take the pain away,” Brooks says. “And I couldn’t.”
That moment stayed with her. Decades later, the same instinct continues to shape how she approaches transplant care, leadership and the teams she helps guide.
Today Brooks serves as manager of the transplant nephrology clinic at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) in Charleston. Her role spans pre- and post-transplant kidney and liver care, oversight of a treatment room where patients prepare for transplant surgery, and support for a growing satellite clinic in Greenville designed to expand access for transplant patients across the state.
But Brooks’ story begins far from transplant medicine, on a dairy farm in rural Michigan.
Lessons from the Farm
Brooks grew up in Stockbridge, Michigan, 30 miles northwest of Ann Arbor, in a farming family whose roots on the land stretch back to 1843. Her father and brother represent the sixth and seventh generations to run the 1,000-acre family dairy farm.
Life there revolved around work, responsibility and teamwork. By age nine or ten, Brooks and her siblings were helping feed calves after school and spending summers stacking square hay bales long before modern farm equipment made the job easier. Her father paid them a dollar an hour.
More importantly, he modeled a work ethic that Brooks still carries with her today. “I know where I got my work ethic,” she says with a laugh. “My dad’s 82 and he’s still farming.”
Those early lessons about hard work and shared responsibility would later prove surprisingly relevant to transplantation.
Finding Transplant by Accident
Brooks did not initially set out to work in transplant medicine. After completing nursing training the long way, first as a licensed practical nurse and later earning her associate, bachelor’s and master’s degrees while working, she built a career in emergency medicine and critical care.
The fast-paced teamwork of the emergency department appealed to her.
In 2010, while working at Trinity Health, Brooks needed to leave the night shift for better work-life balance. She accepted a position as a transplant float coordinator at the University of Michigan. The job rotated her across transplant programs, from kidney to liver to lung and pediatric transplant.
The move changed her career.
Instead of focusing on a single organ program, Brooks gained a broad view of how transplant systems function. She saw the clinical complexity but also the intricate choreography required to move patients from evaluation to transplant and long-term care.
“It gave me an opportunity to learn about all the organs,” she says. “And it also showed me how much transplant is really a team sport.”
She often quotes a phrase she first heard from transplant leaders at Michigan: transplant is ‘the biggest team sport.’ “If you look at all the pieces that have to come together to make a transplant happen, you have to work as a team,” Brooks says. Even now at MUSC, hanging in her office is a poster of the famous saying by Michigan football coach Bo Schembechler: ‘The Team. The Team. The Team.’
Solving Problems that Affect the Whole System
Over her 15 years at the University of Michigan, Brooks became known for a practical, problem-solving approach that colleagues respected.
One of the most significant challenges she helped address involved the burden of organ offer calls. Coordinators responsible for evaluating organ offers were simultaneously expected to manage their regular daytime responsibilities, including patient evaluation and clinic care.
The system created exhaustion and constant turnover.
“It wasn’t physically possible to do both,” Brooks says. “People were up all-night handling organ offers and then expected to do their day job.”
Brooks repeatedly raised the issue with transplant leadership and helped push forward a solution. In 2022, while serving as the Nursing Supervisor for the Liver and Lung Transplant programs at the University of Michigan Transplant Center, the program launched a dedicated organ procurement team responsible for handling organ offers and coordinating the early phases of transplant logistics.
The impact was immediate.
“It was night and day,” Brooks says. “We alleviated a real problem and built a team that could focus on that work.” The experience reinforced her belief that improving transplant systems often depends on operational changes that allow clinical teams to function effectively.
Transplant is the biggest team sport. If the team doesn’t work, the system doesn’t work.
Building Teams in a New Setting
After more than a decade at Michigan, Brooks was ready for a new chapter. She accepted a leadership position at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), bringing her transplant experience south.
Her responsibilities now span several parts of the transplant patient journey. At the transplant nephrology clinic, her team includes nurses, licensed practical nurses, medical assistants and administrative staff working together to support patients before and after kidney or liver transplantation. The clinic also includes an infusion area designed to help transplant patients avoid unnecessary emergency room visits. If patients need fluids, blood transfusions or other interventions, they can receive them in the clinic rather than being admitted through the ER.
“It’s a great way to keep patients out of the emergency room when they don’t need to be there,” Brooks says.
She also oversees the transplant treatment room where patients are prepared for surgery once an organ becomes available. Meanwhile, the Greenville satellite clinic extends transplant care three hours north of Charleston, bringing services closer to patients who otherwise face long travel times.
The work, Brooks says, reflects the same principles she learned earlier in her career: collaboration, problem-solving and flexibility.
“I like being able to work alongside the team in the clinic and still do the management piece,” she says.
Nurses at the Center of Transplant
Brooks believes nurses play a unique role in transplantation because they connect the many moving parts of the system.
Physicians and advanced practice providers determine clinical plans. Nurses ensure those plans actually happen. “We’re the ones who make sure everything gets facilitated,” Brooks says. “We tie up all the loose ends so patients get what they need.”
That coordination might involve scheduling diagnostic tests, ensuring lab monitoring happens on time, adjusting medications or arranging care that prevents complications after transplant.
Nurses are the ones who bring everything together. We make sure the pieces actually happen.
Learning Through Community
Brooks’ commitment to teamwork extends to the national transplant community.
Through the Organ Donation and Transplantation Alliance (The Alliance), she became involved in the organization’s mentorship program and later joined its National Transplant Leadership Council.
The experience, she says, has been energizing.
“When you get with people involved in The Alliance, you come back excited,” Brooks says. “You think, let’s do this. Let’s get things done and help more patients.”
She is currently involved in The Alliance’s Transplant Finance Initiative Workgroup focused on transplant finance, helping develop educational materials that explain complex financial issues such as Medicare cost reporting and organ acquisition costs. The goal is to make these topics easier for professionals across the field to understand.
For Brooks, the work reflects an important part of professional growth.
“I wanted to learn more about the financial side of transplant,” she says. “It’s something that affects every center.”
In 2021, she received The Alliance’s inaugural Bold Leader award that recognizes a leader in the community of practice who commits significant time and expertise to the many initiatives underway at The Alliance.
A Life Focused on Helping Others
Outside the hospital, Brooks and her husband have spent years fostering teenagers who might otherwise struggle to find stable homes. Many of those young people remain close to the family long after leaving the foster system.
Some return for holidays and family gatherings along with Brooks’ son, three stepchildren, and six grandchildren. Others reach out for advice when they need it.
Brooks sees parallels between that commitment and the work she does in transplant medicine. Both, she says, are rooted in the same instinct she felt as a child in that hospital lobby. Helping people when they need it most.
“I’ve always tried to be someone who supports people,” she says.
That mindset continues to guide her career, whether she is mentoring younger professionals through The Alliance, helping build new transplant programs or working alongside nurses and physicians in clinic.
The work, she says, is demanding. But the purpose behind it makes it worthwhile.
“I love being a nurse,” Brooks says. “I love what I do.”
