Patients expect primary care clinicians to care for skin problems. New techniques allow rapid assessment and treatment with less scarring. Although often neglected in residency training, various skin procedures can and should be daily in your practice. Why refer the patients out when you can diagnose and treat most of them? This dermatology CME course includes a dermatology training for common skin procedures, including skin anesthesia, skin biopsy techniques, cryosurgery, electrosurgery, nail procedures, dermoscopy, and coding. Over 1,000 actual clinical slides are used in addition to text to review treatment of lipomas, cysts, ingrown toenails, warts, skin tags, chalazions, abscesses, actinics, seborrheics, basal cell, and squamous cell cancers, malignant melanomas, and much more.
The first day of the course is dedicated to the dermatologic procedures themselves. Understand the approach to the patient with a skin lesion including providing safe and effective local anesthesia. Practice performing all types of skin biopsies including punch, shave, curette/cautery, and excision. Cryosurgery reviews the use of topical refrigerants, liquid nitrogen, and hand-held cryo units. As most CME course participants say after seeing electrosurgery: “Amazing! Practical.” Used every day in the office, these techniques enable treatment of common problems you never thought you would treat; skin lesions, benign nevi, telangiectasias of the face, ingrown toenails, pyogenic granulomas, and more.
The second day of the dermatology course reviews clinical surgical dermatologic problems in detail. A wealth of clinical slides of various skin lesions and procedural videos are used to reinforce the content. During this portion, dermoscopy is demonstrated and practiced, as used in the primary care office.
Additional useful material includes an interactive session on procedural coding and at the end of the course developing an implementation plan is discussed.
Learning Objectives
By the end of this activity, the participant should be better able to:
Perform common office dermatologic procedures including skin anesthesia, skin lesion biopsy, cryosurgery, electrosurgery and Dermoscopy.
Identify various skin lesions that should be biopsied and are surgically treatable in the office.
Describe the diagnosis and treatment of various benign and malignant skin lesions.
Discuss when to refer patients for subspecialty care.
Explain coding and billing issues and pitfalls.
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