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What Is A Dermatologist?
Dermatologists manage all diseases of the skin, hair, nails and mucosa — from common, everyday complaints through to complex, systemic and surgical disease. Here's what draws Dr Tran to this remarkably broad field, in her own words.
Dermatologists manage all diseases associated with the skin — cutaneous skin, mucosal skin (mouth, genitalia, eyes), hair and nails. Skin conditions may be purely local (like acne), a marker of underlying systemic disease (like lupus), infectious (fungal infections, shingles), drug-related (drug reactions, Stevens–Johnson syndrome), or chronic in nature (atopic dermatitis, psoriasis).
Dermatologists are also highly trained skin surgeons, able to both diagnose and manage skin cancers non-surgically, and to surgically excise benign and malignant skin tumours — as well as educate patients on preventing and detecting skin cancer and sun damage. It's a field with real overlap into plastic surgery, rheumatology, infectious diseases, internal medicine, oncology, gynaecology and radiotherapy.
"What drives me is the fact that dermatology combines both the surgical and medical aspects of disease — spanning common conditions like acne, systemic manifestations like drug eruptions, and the very real psychological impact of conditions like alopecia."
Dermatology affects patients of every age and background — from the psychological toll of vitiligo in someone with darker skin, to the anxiety felt by parents of a child with severe atopic dermatitis. That range is part of what makes it so compelling.
Dr Tran feels fortunate to not only provide an accurate diagnosis and immediate relief of symptoms, but to build long-term, trusting and respectful relationships with her patients over years of care. Along the way, she learns a great deal from her patients about their individual circumstances — reinforcing a belief that has shaped her practice from the start: treat the patient, not just the disease.