My Scope of Practice: Following Her Calling to Wound Care

  Aletha Tippett, MD, is a wound consultant in solo practice and President of The Hope of Healing Foundation®, an organization dedicated to limb salvage and wound healing (visit: www.hopeofhealing.org/). Among Dr. Tippett’s more recent accomplishments was serving as Co-Director of the 2nd Annual Palliative Wound Care Conference, held June 10–11, 2011, in Cincinnati, OH. Like many other distinguished wound care peers, Dr. Tippett did not begin her career in this specialty—rather, she followed where she was led.

  Dr. Tippett earned an undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering at the University of Missouri. She worked for 6 years in engineering for Phillips Petroleum and Procter & Gamble, then retired to raise her three daughters. During her 12 years as a stay-at-home mom, she served as a lay minister in her church and a foster parent for 12 children. The year her youngest started kindergarten, she responded to a call into medicine. She moved from Pennsylvania to Ohio to start medical school, from which she graduated first in her class. She graduated from an accelerated residency with honors in family medicine 12 years ago and has been a solo practitioner ever since, handling both the clinical and business aspects of providing care. She maintains her private practice in Blue Ash, OH, a northern suburb of Cincinnati; however, she traverses the city for nursing home, hospital, and home visits. She has worked in more than 60 nursing homes and six hospitals in the city and travels across the country and the world to teach and train about wound care.

  About 10 years ago, Dr. Tippett became involved in hospice work and wound care. A large local hospice invited her to do wound care for them and sent her for a week-long training at a SouthEast Missouri State wound care seminar. The wound care just grew from there. The hospice work was so successful the private work started coming as well. Currently, wound care represents 60% or 70% of her private practice. Although she still works independently, Dr. Tippett has built a team of nurses to help with wound care and hired a nurse practitioner to help with the primary care part of practice.

   “I love what I do and I love wound care,” Dr. Tippett says. “The most gratifying aspect is seeing people get better, helping people heal. The most challenging aspect is dealing with third party payors. Barriers to providing optimal care include lack of coverage for patient care and lack of access for patients in need. Overcoming these barriers requires advocacy and tenacity, but this is just another problem to solve in caring for the patient.”

 Over the past 5 years, Dr. Tippett has significantly increased the amount of training she provides. “My goal is to develop a support staff that can do the job in my absence,” she says. “I hope that my role will evolve to include even more training. I also own the patent for a wound dressing I developed that hopefully will be coming to market in the next year. It will require major effort to help market and launch the dressing.” 

 The Hope of Healing Foundation was formed by three physicians, a vascular surgeon, a foot and ankle surgeon, and Dr. Tippett, a wound specialist, to help educate and advocate for limb salvage and wound healing. The Foundation has sponsored two conferences on palliative wound care and does foot screening at a number of local health events, such as the Black Family Reunion. The Foundation welcomes volunteers who would like to help further the cause of saving limbs and lives.

  For years, Dr. Tippett has been active in the local family medicine society, including serving as president and secretary/treasurer. She is on the editorial boards of WOUNDS, OWM, and Kestrel WoundSource. She provides significant medical expert work in the realm of wounds.

 Outside of work, Dr. Tippett’s best friend and husband of 35 years recently retired and can spend more time on their joint business ventures, including Passport Health, a travel and vaccination company, as well as the medical practice and the development of the commercial wound dressing. Their daughters are grown and like their mom, in fulfilling careers that “pay it forward”: the oldest is a PhD in sociology, working for a think tank at University of Virginia and is married to a Marine; the middle daughter is an RD and works with Dr. Tippett, much to her delight; and the youngest is in her senior year in biology at University of Cincinnati, planning to pursue a graduate degree in speech therapy with the ultimate goal of becoming a hippotherapist. “We are a close family,” says Dr. Tippett. “Lots of talking and doing things together. I love to watch TV mysteries with my husband and children, especially Poirot stories.” Dr. Tippett also enjoys reading action spy/thrillers, usually one per week. Her favorite author currently is Clive Cussler.

  Dr. Tippett advises clinicians to be well grounded in science, be willing to learn everything you can, be open to new things, but yet be skeptical and apply reason and scientific method. Above all, she says, “Be compassionate and willing to love the people you are caring for.” She acknowledges her journey isn’t over yet, so part of the fun is seeing what is next in her scope of practice.

This article was not subject to the Ostomy Wound Management peer-review process.