SPOTLIGHT on Melanie Pratt, MD, FRCPC

In dermatology, we are fortunate to have many of our profession’s innovators and great teachers still among us. This column was created so that we may gain insight from these practitioners and learn more about them. Some are bright stars in our special universe — others unsung heroes. All of these colleagues have much to share from wisdom to humor to insights into dermatology and life. Dr. Melanie Pratt is Professor of Clinical Medicine at the University of Ottawa. She has a special interest in contact dermatitis and occupational dermatitis. She has run a contact dermatitis clinic at the Ottawa Hospital for the last 20 years, where she has assessed more than 500 cases of contact dermatitis annually. Dr. Pratt is a member of the North American Contact Dermatitis Group and a past President of the American Contact Dermatitis Society, as well as the Canadian Contact Dermatitis Group. Her areas of clinical research are in contact dermatitis. She has special interest in textile allergy and occupational contact dermatology cases. Dr. Pratt has mentored dozens of medical students and dermatology residents in the field of general dermatology as well as contact dermatitis. She lectures in this field routinely at a local, provincial, national and international level. Q. Why did you choose dermatology? A. In my final year of medicine, I had the opportunity to do an elective in dermatology with Dr. Robert Jackson, an excellent morphologist as well as a wonderful teacher and mentor. I loved this experience and found his enthusiasm for dermatology quite infectious. He definitely had a tremendous influence on me. Even after I left the service, he continued to send me notices of upcoming meetings and encouraged me to apply to the dermatology residency training program. I am a very visually oriented person and like the concrete nature of this subspecialty. I find dermatology to be a wonderful combination of allergy and immunology, surgery and internal medicine. I find it very challenging and stimulating. I appreciate the fact that the hours are reasonable and it is a subspecialty that allows you to be autonomous. You can choose to be hospital-based or to have a combination of working privately and in a hospital. Q. What part of your work gives you the most pleasure? A. Definitely the contact dermatitis cases that I evaluate and work up with the residents, I find to be the most rewarding. To successfully work up a complicated eczematous dermatitis case giving the patient some relief is, I find, very rewarding. These patients are very appreciative, and there is a lot of gratification in solving these cases. I also thoroughly enjoy my association with the North American Contact Dermatitis Group. I am online daily in the evenings with this wonderful group of 14 individuals with whom I meet twice a year. We collaborate by compiling data and co-publishing multiple papers. These individuals in the NACDG are my colleagues, mentors and friends. They are all great people and I love their company and find it fun to be part of the group. Q. What is your pet peeve? A. l have always been involved in the resident selection process and it has been very rewarding, but at the same time very stressful and challenging. There are so many extremely capable people applying now to dermatology that it is a shame that we cannot choose more of them to train in our programs. The problem is funding and the lack of teachers as we all get older and retire. We are part of the Baby Boomer generation. I am sometimes disappointed with some individuals who looked very promising when they went through their training as prospective dermatologists who would contribute back to the field by teaching, mentoring, doing some administrative duties or performing clinical reasearch, who do not. They disappear into the distance and generate large incomes and don’t participate in the very necessary cycle of training the new crop of dermatologists. Q. What do you think is the greatest political danger to the field of dermatology? A. I feel that as a group, dermatologists lack credibility with the general public and even with our other medical colleagues. Many of these individuals don’t realize what a dermatologist actually does and what is involved in our training, nor are they aware of a dermatologist’s skills. The perception of what a dermatologist does is often very wrong. The high profile of cosmetic dermatology further confuses and perpetuates these misconceptions. Dr. Barankin is a dermatologist based in Toronto, Canada. He is author-editor of five books in dermatology, and is widely published in the dermatology and humanities literature. He is also co-editor of Dermanities (dermanities.com), an online journal devoted to the humanities as they relate to dermatology.