Derm Clinic

I spent two half-days with Kaiser Dermatology seeing all sorts of skin problems. Skin is woefully taught in our traditional curriculum which focuses heavily on internal medicine. Then again, derm is a subject best learned through experience rather than reading a textbook. I got to see a host of common and unusual diseases. From dermatitis to psoriasis to skin cancers to plantar warts, there was both the important and the disgusting. Derm does have that association with "yucky" looking stuff and it takes some getting used to. I think the most important skin thing to learn is differentiating something suspicious for cancer and something benign. I'm beginning to learn how to describe how a lesion looks which is actually fairly complicated. In the derm clinic, I got to see full body skin cancer screens, a number of punch biopsies, a fast office procedure for obtaining tissue, and an excision of a nevus sebaceous (shown above) on the scalp. I'm learning a lot.

Image from www.dermis.net.