PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Eliza Hutchison
AU  - Rakeb Yoseph
AU  - Hannah Wainman
TI  - Skin of colour: essentials for the non-dermatologist
AID  - 10.7861/clinmed.2022-0335
DP  - 2023 Jan 01
TA  - Clinical Medicine
PG  - 2--8
VI  - 23
IP  - 1
4099  - http://www.rcpjournals.org/content/23/1/2.short
4100  - http://www.rcpjournals.org/content/23/1/2.full
SO  - Clin Med2023 Jan 01; 23
AB  - Doctors-in-training often receive an inadequate dermatology education. Furthermore, studies have highlighted the under-representation of skin of colour (SOC) in dermatological teaching, learning resources and research. Our image-based questionnaire, distributed to all internal medicine trainees in southwest England, highlighted knowledge gaps regarding SOC among training physicians. It is intrinsically more challenging for clinicians to confidently formulate dermatological diagnoses in SOC. In this review, we provide guidance for physicians to help make the diagnostic process more straightforward. First, we outline how skin colour is determined and classified. We discuss how inflammation presents in SOC, with the typical ‘erythema’ that physicians often associate with inflammation being a less prominent feature in darker skin tones. We then summarise nine important conditions that we believe physicians working in all specialties should be able to identify in patients with SOC, covering both conditions encountered on the medical take and conditions disproportionately affecting individuals with SOC. The population of the UK is rapidly diversifying; thus, as physicians, we have a professional duty to educate ourselves on dermatological conditions in SOC to provide the best quality of care for all our patients, regardless of their skin type.