Women's Dermatologic Society

  By Dr. Sara Hylwa November begins the transition to the end of the year. Especially for those of us living in northern locales, this transition is felt not only by the march along the calendar, but viscerally as a change in the season: the verdant exuberance of summer has come to an end, even nature’s autumnal color display has succumbed to the inevitable and withered away. While this can feel bleak, November is the month that we celebrate Thanksgiving – a time for reflection, gathering, and (as the name implies), gratitude, gratefulness, and thankfulness. Gratitude can be a difficult emotion to conjure up. Many of us are burnt out – as are the colleagues and staff that we work alongside. All that has occurred in the last few years can be unnerving even just to think about. However, experts tell us that it is in times like these when emotions feel unbalanced that focusing on gratitude can be the most helpful. Indeed, while we don’t have to be thankful for everything that comes ou...

  By the WDS Practice Advisory Committee  From Dr. Mona Sadeghpour: I am part of a dual physician career household; and juggling house and work responsibilities is a daily challenge. The advice that was given to me during my baby-shower was "hire as much help as you can afford." But sometimes the help you hire ends up not working out. Remaining flexible has been the key to success in our household. When we had to suddenly let our nanny go without advanced planning, we found ourselves without childcare when both of us had to work full time. Thankfully, we were able to transition to a full-time daycare within a couple days (by cold-calling all daycares in the area) where our son has since been wonderfully taken care of since. Children get sick (often), nannies don't work out (sometimes), and life still goes on. Remaining flexible and aiming at over communication with your partner, so you can divide and conquer, is key. And for everything else: "hire as much help as you...

By Dr. Morgan Murphrey Would you describe yourself as “curious”? Many physicians would and in the field of dermatology - where we read the stories of the skin - curiosity is a fundamental component of our diagnostic and therapeutic success. It was Albert Einstein, who famously said, “I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.”   I had the opportunity to talk with Dr. Kachiu Lee, a medical and cosmetic dermatologist in the Philadelphia area who trained at Northwestern and Massachusetts General Hospital, and currently serves on the WDS Board of Directors. She has clued into this curiosity, explaining that “physicians have always been curious”. A recent article in the American Journal of Medicine went so far as to assert curiosity as the driving force behind the progress of science. 1     Upon starting residency, Dr. Lee noticed that “there were so many frustrating problems that we ran into and just ignored---like removing tissue from a 2mm punch, p...