Six Reasons to Become a Dermatologist

In the nearly 30 years on medical school faculties, I have counseled students as they made their decisions regarding a future specialty. Only once have I needed to encourage a student to apply into dermatology. Usually, proto-dermatologists have their eyes doggedly fixed on the field from the moment they arrive at medical school (sometimes even years before). In the rare instances when I have counseled these students, it has been to gently encourage them to consider another specialty because their grades and scores all but guarantee that they will never match in the field.¹

It is unfortunate that I so rarely need to encourage people to enter this field. After years of collaborating with dermatologists, I could make a strong case for any student on the fence (without referencing the factors often cited by those less “in the know.”

1. Clinical Acumen

There are few fields in medicine that still prioritize bedside clinical skills to the extent that dermatology does. Most patients are diagnosed at the bedside. There is Type I thinking—pattern recognition, looking at a lesion and simply knowing what it is. There is also Type II thinking: considering the morphology of a lesion, its distribution, its acuity.² Everything that an internist does with a patient with a nonspecific concern, a dermatologist does with an undiagnosed skin lesion.

2. Dermatologic Manifestations of Internal Disease