So many of you guys tell me that you want my job, that you would love to be a
dermatologist - do I have any advice for you... and I think that is spectacular!
Dermatology is a great specialty in medicine, but it is a long road and you
need to work hard and study, you need to stay in school, you need to be persistent and
have a drive and really be passionate about what you do.
So to become a board-certified dermatologist,
I went to university for four years, that's after high school -
four years of college or university and then beyond that you apply to medical school.
Medical school is usually four years and you have to take some special test called the
MCAT to qualify and get a certain score and you apply to medical school. You get into
medical school and then you have like the world open to what kind of specialty
you want to be in medicine. So around the 3rd year or so is when you really kinda decide what
specialty you want to get into when you apply for that specialty - you go on
interviews, and you try to match into that specific residency. So residency is when
you actually finish medical school and then you have to specifically train
in whatever specialty it would be. You can go into internal medicine, you can go
into family practice, you could be an orthopedic surgeon, you could be a cardiothoracic
surgeon, an ophthalmologist, a radiologist - all of these are different specialties
within medicine and so I went into dermatology. Dermatology residency is a
very competitive residency. In fact it's probably the most competitive that there
is around because there are very few position and they're really highly
sought after but it's also very interesting and you can do so many
things in it! You can become a surgeon - which is what I like to do - you could
just see pediatric patients, you could just see elderly patients, you could do
immunology, you could do lab work - there's just so many
avenues or specialties you can become an expert at within dermatology.
Dermatology is a four-year residency so after medical school if you get into
dermatology it is four years. You do an initial year of transitional medicine
it's called and then after that then we get into our real dermatology residency
which is three years long. And during that time we are studying all the text
books, we are reading everything about dermatology, we are seeing our
own patients but under the watchful eye of our dermatologists in the
dermatology program. So this is where we're really learning how to be
dermatologists. And we are already physicians. We already have that degree
from medical school but we have not specialized in dermatology until we
finish those four years and then we have to take the boards and we have to study
for that. And additionally I did a year of fellowship which was like a
more specialized training which you don't have to do to become a
dermatologist. The fellowship was in cosmetic laser
and Moh's surgery which taught me even more in detail about how to do hair
transplants, how to do lower face face lifts, how to do upper and lower eye lifts, how to
do liposuction, how to do Moh's micrographic surgery... So I added all
these things to my practice really. So after you graduate from your dermatology
residency and you've taken your boards and your board certified dermatologist,
this is when you decide what you want to do with this. Do you want to work in a
group with a bunch of other dermatologists? In a private practice?
Do you want to work for a big group like a hospital and you're the dermatologist on
staff there? Do you want to work for yourself or do you want to be employed by a big
corporation or big practice? And so all these things come into mind. By the time
I finished all my schooling, I was 33. That was a long time and a long road to become a
dermatologist, so you have to be dedicated. I love that so many of you are
getting motivated and you want to be dermatologists and I think that's wonderful and if
you have the passion go for it! But I'm just trying to give it to you
realistically, it is NOT an easy road. It is difficult specialty to get into and I
think all of us dermatologists feel really lucky to be dermatologists.
Thank you as always for watching! You guys are so supportive. I love the comments I get on
my YouTube channel. I know I can't always answer every one of them but I do read
them. I'm very proud to be able to show you a little bit about my world and I'm
very proud that a lot of you guys are getting excited about possibly being a
dermatologist. So thank you very much!