On June 15th, I job shadowed at Mobile Dermatology! I had a blast and really loved the atmosphere. I arrived at around 9am for the second round of the office visits for the day. Usually the first half of the day is the clinic and the second half are surgeries (I stayed for both).
The morning was very casual: many checkups from recent skin cancer patients (generally mid 60s-70s), some patch testing for allergies (he showed me how to read them), and just another regular checkups from people with flare ups of eczema. When checking patients that presented new spots that popped up (they were concerned it was new skin cancer), he either said it was pre-cancer and froze it off and cut a piece to send to the pathologist or dismissed it as everyday keratosis.
The surgeries: I stayed for a few cancer removals (mostly basal cells, I believe). Because he uses local anesthesia rather than general anesthesia, these surgeries were nothing too drastic. There were some removals on the legs, neck, back, etc. He numbered the area, cut out the cancer, cauterized it, sewed it up, and called it a day. I was able to get very close to everything and had a great view of him cutting the cancer out. Everything was very casual and he kept a conversation with the patients as he was doing all of this.
All in all, I really enjoyed the experience. He told me that he graduated from spring hill (one of my top options right now), and he spoke very highly of their programs for pre-health. While I still don't quite know what I am interested in yet, I definitely know I enjoyed dermatology
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