A Couch and a Few Open Doors
by Junaid Shahzad, M2
During Christmas time, it’ s tradition for friends and family to come and gather and recollect on good times. For Dr. Steven Lippmann, he used these times to open his own house to his psychiatry residents. One of those residents in particular, who had never been invited to a Christmas party before, was exhausted, sleep-deprived and a new mother. Imagine how difficult it must have been to balance those responsibilities at the same time, in your new home country, and unable to find a babysitter while you must go see your psychiatrist attending in a semi-professional setting. So there Dr. Lippmann was, opening the door to one of his residents with her nearly 1-year-old child( me!) in hand. Without any hesitation at all, he offered his own couch in a separate room to let her rest me there without disturbance. This would be the start of the mentoring relationship between Dr. Lippmann and me.
Thinking back to my undergraduate years, I was a simple 19-yearold fascinated by the world of medicine. I searched and searched for opportunities that could help me in a pre-med career and happened to find a free clinic called the Family Community Clinic( FCC). They were looking for volunteers to help health providers with tasks as they treat underserved communities in the Louisville area. No experience was necessary, so it was a perfect opportunity for me to learn. However, I hesitated, worried that I would simply get in the way of the provider instead of helping them. Doing what all simple 19-year-olds would do when they have no clue, I reached out to my mother, a psychiatrist attending at this time, for advice on how to approach this issue. I remember when she reassured me, telling me that one of her mentors volunteers at that clinic and that I could shadow him at any time. With that, I took the plunge and decided to meet the physician who had once trained my own mom.
I remember the first time I entered the Family Community Clinic, the smell of Butchertown in the air as I walked towards the back of a church to find the location. I remember not knowing whether to show up in scrubs or in professional attire, keeping a spare set of khakis in the car in case I needed to change. I met with their volunteer coordinator, Fabi, who let me know that Dr. Lippmann was already in a room with a patient and to wait outside the room for him. I stood outside that room rehearsing my introduction, fully prepared to shake hands with the first person I saw that came out in a white coat. When the time came, the door opened and out came not one white coat … not two white coats … but three people in white coats coming out of the exam room as they said farewell to the patient. As I was trying to restructure my introduction and determine which of these doctors I needed to greet, out of the exam room came the jolly demeanor of a tall, older gentleman with a snow-white beard and a multi-colored bowtie. How many doctors does it take to work just one patient? He noticed me, immediately ran up to me and said“ You must be Junaid! Slam Alay-kum! Let me get the paperwork in order for this patient and then we can introduce ourselves.” I knew I had found the one and only Dr. Lippmann.
Throughout those years of shadowing with Dr. Lippmann, I started to pick up on some of his traits and quirks. The first of which is that he loves to learn from the world around him. All three white coats that I met that day were IMG students, all brought in by Dr. Lippmann to help them achieve residencies here in the U. S. Dr. Lippmann was born in the U. S. to German immigrants and was even fluent in German, and kept that immigrant background as
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