Brooke Williams will graduate from UTC’s Doctor of Nursing Practice-Family Nurse Practitioner program. Photo by Hannah Burrell.
Outside of her already busy life as a student in the Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) program at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Brooke Williams works as a pediatric home health nurse, a sexual assault nurse examiner and a clinical adjunct instructor at Chattanooga State Community College.
On Friday, May 8, Williams will cross one of these roles off her list and add a “Dr.” honorific to her name.
Williams, a Nashville native, will graduate with a DNP with a Family Nurse Practitioner concentration. She is part of the second DNP-FNP cohort at UTC and the first to graduate under the newly established College of Nursing.
Her path to UTC was not straightforward. Williams began her undergraduate studies at UTC before transferring to ChattState, where she earned her associate degree in nursing. She completed a bachelor’s degree in nursing online through Chamberlain University.
“There were things that I didn’t feel like aligned with what I felt my education needed as a nurse practitioner,” Williams said. “That is when I started looking at other schools.”
She found her way back to UTC, though just barely. When she found the program’s website, the application deadline had passed. She reached out to Dr. Amber Roche, coordinator of the program, and was granted an extension.
“I’m very religious, so I was like, this is the Lord,” Williams said. “UTC is not where I started, but I’m really, really happy it’s where I ended.”
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Williams began building her career long before she stepped into a doctoral program.
After graduating from nursing school, she completed a pediatric residency at Erlanger Health System, where she was matched to the pediatric emergency room.
She later worked at Moccasin Bend Mental Health Institute before working in pediatric home health—caring for medically complex infants and children who required nursing care at home.
“I loved that,” she said. “I actually still do that today.”
Around that same time, Williams earned her certification as a sexual assault nurse examiner (SANE) through Partnership, a Chattanooga organization that helps survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault.
She also returned to ChattState as a clinical adjunct instructor, guiding the next generation of nursing students through simulations and clinical rotations.
“I still do that too,” she said with a laugh. “All of these jobs, they’ve just kind of happened all at once.”
The through line between all of these roles—and in her future career as a nurse practitioner—is patient autonomy, which she described as her greatest passion in nursing.
“Meeting patients where they are is probably the most rewarding thing as a nurse and a future nurse practitioner,” she said. “Giving patients a sense that they’re in the midst of the care plan. They’re a huge part of how it’s constructed and created.”
Williams said it is important that her patients “understand their rights,” and that placing their needs first is simply part of the job.
“If the provider is not listening to you, leave,” she said. “It’s your body … If you feel like you’re not being heard, that’s a problem.”
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As a SANE, Williams noticed something troubling. Despite being at a statistically vulnerable age, she said UTC students rarely sought out services at Partnership.
“We were like, ‘Why do we never see UTC students at Partnership?’” she said. “Is it that they don’t understand consent? They don’t understand what sexual assault looks like—or do they just not know that we even exist?”
Williams worked alongside classmate Amanda Rice, developing a series of sexual assault informational sessions for undergraduate students at UTC. They partnered with Emily Rosenquist, UTC’s Title IX student specialist, through an initiative called “Don’t Cancel Your Class.” The program allows faculty to invite guest educators into their classroom sessions rather than canceling when they’re away.
The sessions were designed to make the subject more approachable and included pre-surveys and post-surveys. The team moved away from clinical language and reframed sexual assault as “an uncomfortable situation that you didn’t consent to.”
“That got really good feedback,” Williams said. “Individuals were like, ‘We’ve never had anything like this.’”
UTC is set to implement a new sexual assault education module this summer, informed in part by Williams and Rice’s research. Their presentation was added to the “Do Not Cancel Class” offerings available to instructors across campus.
“We took a problem, we created a solution, and now it looks great,” Williams said. “Now it needs to stay on UTC’s campus so students can know what they have available to them if they ever need to use it.”
Brooke Williams (yellow scrubs) participates in a simulation while DNP classmate Amanda Rice plays the role of a patient. Photo by Angela Foster.
One of the experiences Williams said shaped her most as a clinician happened next to a campus Coke machine.
UTC’s DNP-FNP program features a simulation lab that resembles a working doctor’s office. Students are observed through one-way glass by faculty while working through patient encounters with trained simulation actors.
Williams described the cohort’s last simulation as “extremely eye-opening.”
“It was not in a clinical setting,” she said. “They set it up to where we were going out into the community to help homeless individuals.”
The sim room was arranged to look like the space a homeless person might occupy. The actor was waiting and Williams walked in with nothing but a stethoscope.
“It’s those situations where I thought you wouldn’t get this without the hands-on experience,” she said. “All we went in with was our stethoscope. How do you assess someone like that? What do you ask? How do you approach them?”
Experiences like these are what Williams said sets UTC apart.
“Simulation as a whole has shaped so much how I walk into a room, what I ask and how I talk to people,” Williams said. “They’re terrifying, don’t get me wrong. But that is your safe space. You can mess up and get feedback. You can take your time. It is such a great learning environment for going into this career.”
Williams said the program’s small size means students can receive individualized attention from faculty.
“UTC has truly provided an extremely strong, concrete foundation for my career and my overall being as a nurse practitioner,” she said. “The instructors are phenomenal … They’ve really launched all of us into a great career and given us the tools and knowledge that we need to do it.”
Brooke Williams plays the role of provider during a simulation with two Erlanger nursing residents. Photo by Angela Foster.
As graduation approaches, Williams is thinking about the future.
She plans to continue her work as a SANE at Partnership and in pediatric home health, and said teaching remains one of her favorite jobs—one that she has no intentions of leaving behind.
“My mom and dad make fun of me because when I was younger, I wanted to be a teacher so bad,” she said. “I would spread my stuffed animals out, pass papers out to them and teach them. Then I said I wanted to be a nurse—and then I became a teacher anyway.”
Williams said primary care and women’s health are where her heart is, and she expects to land in a clinic setting seeing patients across the lifespan. She’s open to returning to UTC in a teaching role one day, particularly once the new Dorothy and Jim Kennedy Health Sciences Building is complete.
“Working with the faculty that taught me? One million percent,” she said. “The new simulation lab would pull me back.”
Her work inside and outside the classroom did not go unnoticed. Williams was named a recipient of UTC’s Outstanding Graduate Student Award, which honors students who demonstrate exceptional academic achievement and leadership, and who go above and beyond in their research and service to the campus community.
As for the DNP program, Williams said it changed how she thinks about her role in healthcare.
“You really bridge up when it comes to that leadership role,” she said. “Digging into evidence, finding gaps in research and saying, ‘How can I make the nursing profession better? How can I continue to improve the quality of care that patients receive?’ That’s what a DNP gives you the tools to do.”
Photo by Hannah Burrell
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