Why See a Board-Certified Dermatologist?

26497The American Academy of Dermatology just recently started a new campaign to help increase public awareness of the importance of seeing a Board-Certified Dermatologist for your skin, hair, nails and mucous membrane (lips, tongue, eyes) needs. Please take a few moments to review the diagrams to help familiarize yourself with the significant training differences between board-certified dermatologists, physician assistants, and nurse practitioners.

For many, this article will be an eyeopener and help shed light on many questions that have remained unanswered within the general public. We at Dimensional Dermatology feel that all of these levels of training have their place within the dermatology specialty. However, the important takeaway from this post should be that there are varying levels of expertise. We believe that both physician assistants and nurse practitioners should have proper supervision by a board-certified dermatologist to aid in the recognition of difficult diagnoses and help facilitate varying levels of treatment in complex dermatology cases.

In many instances, physician extenders (physician assistants and nurse practitioners) help increase access to healthcare for underserved and underprivileged populations, while still being properly supervised. However, there are ongoing instances in which proper supervision does not occur, putting patients lives and wellbeing in jeopardy. Overall, physician assistants and nurse practitioners are valuable contributors to patient care and will continue to increase access to healthcare across the country.

For more information on the difference between physicians and physician assistants, please read our other article entitled: What is the Difference Between a Physician and Physician Assistant?

Is your dermatologist certified by the American Board of Dermatology? Find out HERE: https://www.certificationmatters.org/is-your-doctor-board-certified/search-now.aspx

what we treat.jpg

02.jpg

05-do-your-homework.jpg

For more information about this important public awareness campaign, please follow the link below:
https://www.aad.org/public/find-a-dermatologist/why-see-a-board-certified-dermatologist

References:
*All pictorials and diagrams are property of the American Academy of Dermatology

  1. https://www.aad.org/public/find-a-dermatologist/why-see-a-board-certified-dermatologist
  2. https://www.aad.org

 

Published by Dr. Paul M. Graham

Paul M. Graham, D.O. (Founder/Editor-in-chief) founded Dimensional Dermatology in May 2016 with the vision to provide concise, easy to read, up-to-date dermatology and aesthetic medicine information to patients, medical staff, providers, and the general public. Dr. Graham is currently completing his training as a cosmetic dermatologic surgery fellow in Virginia Beach, Virginia at the McDaniel Laser and Cosmetic Center. He completed his dermatology training at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital and was a clinical instructor at Michigan State University. He received his B.S. degree as Summa Cum Laude at Old Dominion University, his D.O. degree as Cum Laude at Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine, completed his internship at Largo Medical Center in Largo, Florida as chief intern, and completed his dermatology residency training at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: