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The following article talks about an ear, nose and throat specialist who graduated from LECOM. Cool stuff. 
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=11975868&BRD=2212&PAG=461&dept_id=465812&rfi=6
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=11975868&BRD=2212&PAG=461&dept_id=465812&rfi=6
Father and daughter are ear, nose and throat specialists
By DAVID BRUCE, The Associated Press June 16, 2004
Ruthann Lipman was about 7 years old when she learned what her dad does for a living.
Dr. Sidney Lipman, was playing at the beach with his family when St. Vincent Health Center paged him to treat a motorcycle accident victim who had suffered serious facial injuries.
Sidney Lipman, an ear, nose and throat specialist, took Ruthann to the hospital's emergency department and left her in a hallway. As he examined the accident victim, Ruthann peeked into the treatment room.
"This guy had terrible injuries, and it was amazing to see my dad working on him," she recalled 20 years later. "Even though there was blood, it wasn't disgusting."
Dr. Ruthann Lipman, doesn't have to sneak into emergency rooms anymore. She graduated from Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine in 2002 and is a first-year resident with her father's practice, ENT Specialists of Northwestern Pennsylvania.
Instead of peeking in on patients, she sits right next to her father as he operates, often lending a hand or a suggestion.
"We're doing five separate cases today," Ruthann Lipman said after helping her dad remove a patient's implanted hearing aid in a Saint Vincent operating room. "We should have brought our pj's."
The two Dr. Lipmans, dressed in colorful surgical caps, talked nearly nonstop during the hourlong surgery. They discussed recent movies and the benefits and drawbacks of various hearing aids.
"What you see in the operating room isn't necessarily a father-daughter relationship but more like mentor-student," said Dr. Alan Glaser, a Saint Vincent anesthesiologist who often works with the Lipmans. "He is teaching her in the same careful and diligent way he teaches other residents."
Lipman, 28, has lived her life surrounded by medicine. Her mother, Karen, worked as a nurse at the ENT practice for 20 years and counseled allergy patients at the family's Millcreek home.
Family dinner discussions often revolved around new surgical procedures or interesting patients who showed up at the office that day. Friends who cut themselves playing with Ruthann or her two siblings were often stitched up at the Lipmans' kitchen table.
"I know a lot of doctors who aren't happy, but I can't imagine doing anything different," Sidney Lipman said. "I love the field that I'm in, and I know Ruthann will, too."
She was the only Lipman child to study medicine. Her brother Ben, 25, is a computer systems manager in Arizona, and her sister Margo, 22, is a former national champion snowboarder and a student at Princeton University.
Ruthann Lipman wanted to be a doctor since that day in the Saint Vincent emergency department, but she wasn't sure she wanted to follow directly in her father's footsteps.
She studied at LECOM because she wanted to learn the "hands-on" approach of osteopathic medicine, which includes chiropractic adjustments of the spine.
"I like the manipulative type of medicine," she said. "I'm always giving my friends massages."
Ruthann Lipman also delayed choosing her medical specialty. She was still undecided near the end of her fourth year of medical school _ a year after many students have already picked their specialty.
Her father made no secret of the fact he would love for her to become an ear, nose and throat specialist, but she enjoyed working on research projects with Dr. Justine Schober, a Hamot Medical Center pediatric urologist.
"I didn't choose my specialty until four or five months before my internship," Ruthann Lipman said. "I was really torn between ENT and pediatric urology."
She chose her father's specialty.
"I knew ENT would prevail," Sidney Lipman said with a broad smile. "It's a varied field. You perform surgery, and you also see patients in the office. There is no routine. I just treated an 11-month-old and cleaned wax out of the ear of an 88-year-old."
Ruthann Lipman also relishes the chance to spend her four-year residency at her father's practice, where she worked as a teenager filing charts and escorting patients into examination rooms.
She plans to take a one-year fellowship out of town to study a particular ENT subspecialty.
"I'm thinking about going somewhere else for my fellowship because there's a good chance that I'll come back here to work, and I don't want all my knowledge to come from one place," she said.
Ruthann Lipman and her father share many traits, said her mother, Karen Lipman. They both care deeply about their patients and are quick to share a joke.
They are also very different, Karen Lipman said.
"Ruthann is more likely to think things through, while Sidney is more willing to do things fast," she said. "When I was working at the office, I'd stay with a patient after he'd leave the exam room and ask if they understood everything he said."
Having two doctors with the same last name can cause confusion in the office or operating room. When a nurse asked for Dr. Lipman during a recent surgery, both doctors turned their heads and asked, "What?"
Some nurses, technicians and doctors have taken to calling them "Dr. Lipman the Older" and "Dr. Lipman the Younger."
"I told a patient just after I started here to make a follow-up appointment with me by asking for the female Dr. Lipman," Ruthann Lipman said. "When she called, the office person told her that she has been working at the office for 23 years, and there has never been a female Dr. Lipman. She forgot I was working here. She felt so embarrassed and apologized."
Sidney Lipman, 52, has no plans to retire but realizes that someday he will stop looking up people's noses, down their throats and inside their ears.
Now it appears another Lipman will be there to take his place.
"It's a legacy," he said. "I will be gone, but she'll be here. People will forget about me, but they will know the name because of her."
