The Wound Whisperer: How Brian Yoos Found His Calling at 38

Brian Yoos didn’t set out to become a nurse, and he certainly didn’t plan to become a Long Island comedian. For over two decades, he cycled through business, sales, and retail, chasing paychecks that never quite settled into something stable. But service had always been in his blood.

A Family Legacy of Showing Up

Yoos grew up watching his father sprint out the door at all hours as a volunteer firefighter, coach nearly every team he played on, and stay active as a scoutmaster long after his own kids were grown. That example took root. By 14, Yoos and his older brother had both become Junior Firefighters. His brother went on to a full career with the FDNY, while Yoos served in the fire service himself before eventually trading in his turnout gear for scrubs.

It runs deep in the family: his father was a firefighter, his brother is one, so is his uncle and brother-in-law. His wife and daughter are both social workers. His sister-in-law and mother-in-law were nurses. Service, in one form or another, is simply what the Yoos family does.

Reinventing Himself at 38

After years of inconsistent work, Yoos made a decision most people talk themselves out of: he went back to school — full time — at 38 years old, with a wife, two kids, and three part-time jobs to keep the household afloat. He credits his background riding ambulances and fire trucks with pointing him toward nursing, and specifically toward wound care, where he now spends his days healing bed sores, vascular wounds, and surgical injuries.

"It's so rewarding," he says of the specialty, one of the only areas of nursing, he notes, where you can watch the human body regenerate itself in real time, day by day and week by week.

He's candid about the parts of the industry that frustrate him, costs sometimes outweighing care, facilities hesitant to escalate a patient's treatment, staffing cut too thin. His advice to patients and families: be your own advocate. Push when you have to. The system doesn't always fight for you first.

Finding the Funny

Off the clock, Yoos is a comedian. This is a great a release valve for a demanding job. The class clown who "always said" he'd try stand-up finally did, and got hooked almost instantly. He doesn't write jokes down; he turns a premise over in his head until it's ready, tests it onstage, and adjusts from there, a process he attributes partly to having ADHD and a brain that prefers juggling several things at once over sitting still with a notebook.

His comedy leans dark, off-color, unafraid of subjects most people are told to avoid. But he's found that humor, delivered with care, can land exactly where it's needed. When a friend was diagnosed with ALS, he opened with a joke, and she told him it was exactly what she needed to hear. After accidentally making a cancer joke at a cancer fundraiser, he apologized to the organizer, who told him it was the first time in months he'd gotten to laugh about something that usually made him cry. That moment, Yoos says, is what made him want to keep doing it.

His influences run toward comedy's boundary-pushers, Carlin, Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Andrew Dice Clay — with a soft spot today for Bill Burr, Jo Koy, and Shane Gillis.

Behind the Mic and Behind the Curtain

Yoos has also stepped into producing, running shows across four Long Island venues plus stops in Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and, this July, a nearly sold-out debut in New York City that got upgraded to a bigger room mid-run. Unlike many producers who pay headliners well and leave the rest of the lineup scraps, Yoos pays every comedian what he believes they're worth, regardless of billing or how many people they bring through the door. It costs him money. He does it anyway.

Giving Back, On and Off Stage

Beyond nursing and comedy, Yoos stays rooted in community work, a founding and former board member of a firefighter charity he still supports, and a current board member for a stroke prevention and awareness nonprofit, where he regularly organizes fundraiser shows. Over the years he's helped raise money for a children's charity, a police charity, and a fire department charity.

After a personal step back from comedy in recent months, Yoos has nothing on the books until next year, but two of his regular venues are already planning fall shows, and he's quietly working new rooms into the mix, hoping a few of them stick.

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