Top 12 Dermatologist Skills to Put on Your Resume
In the highly specialized field of dermatology, showcasing a comprehensive set of skills on your resume can sharpen your edge with hiring teams. When you spotlight core dermatologist skills, you’re not just signaling competence—you’re framing yourself as a clinician who can handle complex cases, communicate clearly, and deliver safe, effective care across varied settings.
Dermatologist Skills
- Teledermatology
- Dermoscopy
- Laser Therapy
- Mohs Surgery
- Phototherapy
- Cryotherapy
- Botox Administration
- Chemical Peels
- Excisional Surgery
- Biopsy Techniques
- EMR Proficiency (e.g., Epic, Cerner)
- Skin Cancer Screening
1. Teledermatology
Teledermatology delivers dermatologic assessment and follow-up remotely through secure, high-quality imaging and live video, allowing timely diagnosis and management without an in-person visit.
Why It's Important
It expands access, trims wait times, and supports ongoing care for patients in rural or underserved areas—while preserving efficiency for busy clinics.
How to Improve Teledermatology Skills
Focus on clarity, consistency, and safety from first click to final note.
Upgrade the experience: Use high-resolution, color-accurate imaging and HIPAA-compliant platforms with two-factor authentication. Offer both store-and-forward and live video.
Train for digital visits: Triage protocols, concise digital communication, and photo quality assessment (lighting, distance, scale with a ruler) matter.
Standardize protocols: Image capture guides, consent language, documentation templates, and secure storage policies reduce errors and rework.
Broaden accessibility: Mobile-friendly workflows, interpreter access, captions, and clear instructions for non-technical users widen reach.
Teach patients: Provide simple guides for taking sharp, well-lit, in-focus images and avoiding beauty filters that distort lesions.
Dial in these steps and remote care feels natural—fast, accurate, dependable.
How to Display Teledermatology Skills on Your Resume
2. Dermoscopy
Dermoscopy uses magnification and polarized or non-polarized light to reveal subsurface skin structures, sharpening detection of malignancy and refining diagnoses of inflammatory and pigmented disorders.
Why It's Important
It boosts diagnostic accuracy, catches skin cancers earlier, and reduces unnecessary biopsies when used systematically.
How to Improve Dermoscopy Skills
Steady practice plus structure beats guesswork.
Keep learning: Take focused dermoscopy courses and refreshers; master core algorithms (two-step, 7-point checklist, TADA).
Practice daily: Review every lesion dermoscopically when feasible; build a personal image library for pattern recognition.
Collaborate: Case clubs, peer review, and QA sessions help calibrate threshold and reduce cognitive bias.
Use the right tools: Know when to choose polarized vs non-polarized, contact vs non-contact, and immersion fluids. Consider digital dermoscopy, sequential monitoring, and total body photography for high-risk patients.
Stay current: Track updates on new patterns, pitfalls in skin of color, and evolving criteria for special sites.
How to Display Dermoscopy Skills on Your Resume
3. Laser Therapy
Laser and energy-based devices target water, hemoglobin, melanin, or hair follicles with specific wavelengths to treat vascular and pigmented lesions, scars, wrinkles, acne, and unwanted hair.
Why It's Important
They offer precision with minimal downtime when matched correctly to indication, skin type, and parameters.
How to Improve Laser Therapy Skills
Safety first, nuance second, documentation always.
Commit to continuing education: Track new platforms, pulse structures, and indications; practice on models before patients.
Personalize parameters: Calibrate fluence, pulse duration, spot size, cooling, and stacking by Fitzpatrick type, lesion depth, and response—use test spots for higher-risk skin.
Combine thoughtfully: Pair with topicals, injectables, or microneedling when evidence supports synergy.
Harden safety protocols: Eye protection, plume evacuation, skin cooling, smoke-free rooms, and strict contraindication screening.
Document everything: Device, wavelength, consumables, parameters, passes, endpoints, photos, and aftercare.
How to Display Laser Therapy Skills on Your Resume
4. Mohs Surgery
Mohs micrographic surgery removes skin cancer layer by layer with immediate histologic assessment and precise mapping until margins are clear.
Why It's Important
It delivers the highest cure rates for many non-melanoma skin cancers while conserving healthy tissue and optimizing functional and cosmetic outcomes.
How to Improve Mohs Surgery Skills
Better maps, better margins, better patient experience.
Refine technique: Obsess over orientation, inking, and mapping; confirm complete epidermal and deep margin assessment; tighten frozen section workflow.
Use appropriate use criteria: Align case selection with evidence-based indications; consider staged excision for select tumors where appropriate.
Modernize pathology: When available and approved, integrate digital capture and standardized reporting; validate quality with periodic slide reviews.
Elevate reconstruction: Master flaps, grafts, and linear closures; plan along relaxed skin tension lines; involve multidisciplinary partners for complex defects.
Center the patient: Clear preoperative counseling, intraoperative comfort, and concise aftercare instructions reduce anxiety and complications.
How to Display Mohs Surgery Skills on Your Resume
5. Phototherapy
Phototherapy treats inflammatory and pigmentary disorders with controlled light exposure—most commonly narrowband UVB, with excimer laser/lamps, UVA1, and PUVA for select cases.
Why It's Important
It’s non-invasive, cost-effective for chronic disease, and often steroid-sparing.
How to Improve Phototherapy Skills
Precision dosing and strict safety make the difference.
Optimize equipment: Maintain calibrated narrowband UVB (311–313 nm) units; consider 308 nm excimer for focal disease; reserve PUVA judiciously.
Customize protocols: Base starting doses on skin type or MED testing; adjust for missed sessions, photosensitizing meds, and recent sun exposure.
Protect relentlessly: Eye and genital shielding, burn prevention, and routine skin checks; counsel on cumulative dose and non-treatment sun safety.
Boost adherence: Simplify scheduling, consider home phototherapy when appropriate, and use reminders; give clear, brief after-visit summaries.
Monitor and adapt: Track response by body site with photos; taper intelligently; combine with topical/systemic agents when evidence supports.
How to Display Phototherapy Skills on Your Resume
6. Cryotherapy
Cryotherapy destroys target tissue with extreme cold—typically liquid nitrogen—most often for actinic keratoses, seborrheic keratoses, warts, skin tags, and select superficial lesions.
Why It's Important
It’s quick, accessible, and effective for many benign and premalignant lesions, with minimal instrumentation.
How to Improve Cryotherapy Skills
Control the freeze, control the outcome.
Match method to lesion: Spray vs contact probe, single vs double freeze–thaw, and margin goals vary by diagnosis and anatomic site.
Standardize technique: Aim for an appropriate ice halo; time freezes and thaws; protect surrounding skin with shields or petroleum barriers.
Minimize risk: Avoid cryo on pigmented lesions suspicious for melanoma; discuss dyspigmentation and scarring risks—especially in darker skin types and on cosmetically sensitive areas.
Enhance comfort: Use topical anesthetics when appropriate; consider nerve blocks for larger areas; provide simple post-care instructions.
Keep learning: Refresh on indications, contraindications, and nuanced dosing for different lesions; audit results and adjust protocols.
How to Display Cryotherapy Skills on Your Resume
7. Botox Administration
Botulinum toxin injections temporarily relax target muscles to soften dynamic rhytids and can also treat conditions like hyperhidrosis.
Why It's Important
It’s a cornerstone cosmetic treatment with high satisfaction when dosing and placement are precise.
How to Improve Botox Administration Skills
Subtle hands, sharp eyes, clear plans.
Master anatomy: Layered understanding of facial musculature, vascular landmarks, and individual asymmetries reduces complications.
Tune assessment: Map animation patterns at rest and with expression; set expectations; photograph baseline.
Refine technique: Reconstitute correctly, mark injection points, angle and depth with intent, and dose by muscle strength—not habit.
Prevent and manage issues: Know how to avoid brow and lid ptosis, smile asymmetry, and neck weakness; provide aftercare that limits spread.
Follow up: Offer touchpoints for dose adjustments and build a dosing history per patient.
How to Display Botox Administration Skills on Your Resume
8. Chemical Peels
Chemical peels remove controlled layers of skin with acids or phenol to improve texture, tone, acne, dyschromia, and some scars.
Why It's Important
They can deliver broad rejuvenation and targeted correction with predictable downtime when properly selected and executed.
How to Improve Chemical Peels Skills
Right patient, right peel, right prep.
Match peel to indication: Choose AHA/BHA for superficial issues, TCA for medium-depth needs, and deeper options cautiously for severe photoaging or scars.
Pre-treat wisely: Use sunscreen rigorously; consider retinoids and pigment suppressors when appropriate, especially in higher Fitzpatrick types to reduce PIH risk.
Customize concentration: Titrate strength, passes, and layering by skin type and response; perform test spots for sensitive patients.
Respect safety: Neutralize AHAs promptly; understand that TCA is self-neutralizing; use deep peels sparingly and with monitoring.
Own the aftercare: Gentle cleansing, emollients, strict photoprotection, and clear guidance on expected frosting, peeling, and timelines.
How to Display Chemical Peels Skills on Your Resume
9. Excisional Surgery
Excisional surgery removes a lesion with an appropriate margin of normal skin, typically under local anesthesia, for definitive diagnosis and treatment.
Why It's Important
It enables complete removal, accurate pathology, and tailored reconstruction for benign and malignant conditions.
How to Improve Excisional Surgery Skills
Plan clean, cut clean, close clean.
Plan meticulously: Confirm diagnosis with dermoscopy or biopsy as needed; mark along relaxed skin tension lines; choose margins based on pathology and location.
Execute with precision: Gentle tissue handling, adequate undermining, layered closure, and hemostasis reduce complications and improve cosmesis.
Standardize aftercare: Give clear wound care instructions, infection and dehiscence warnings, and suture removal timing by site.
Coordinate pathology: Provide complete clinical context and orientation to your lab; track turnaround and communicate results rapidly.
Keep sharpening: Update techniques, incorporate new closure methods, and review outcomes routinely.
How to Display Excisional Surgery Skills on Your Resume
10. Biopsy Techniques
Dermatologic biopsies—shave, punch, or excisional—sample tissue for histopathology to clarify diagnosis and guide treatment.
Why It's Important
They provide definitive answers for cancers, infections, and inflammatory skin disease when clinical clues won’t settle the question.
How to Improve Biopsy Techniques Skills
Choose wisely, sample smart, and care for the wound.
Select the right method: For suspected melanoma, favor excisional or deep shave with narrow margins; sample an active edge for rashes; avoid superficial shaves when depth matters.
Enhance comfort and hemostasis: Buffer local anesthetic, inject slowly, and use aluminum chloride, pressure, or light cautery to control bleeding.
Be precise: Orient specimens, mark margins when relevant, and include differential diagnosis and clinical details on the requisition.
Prevent complications: Consider location-specific risks, antibiotic stewardship, and keloid tendencies; set expectations for scar appearance and timelines.
Close the loop: Deliver results promptly and document follow-up plans or additional treatment.
How to Display Biopsy Techniques Skills on Your Resume
11. EMR Proficiency (e.g., Epic, Cerner)
EMR proficiency means recording, retrieving, and communicating clinical information accurately and fast—templates, orders, images, messages, the works.
Why It's Important
It compresses administrative time, reduces errors, improves coordination, and keeps patient care moving without friction.
How to Improve EMR Proficiency (e.g., Epic, Cerner) Skills
Small tweaks add up—minutes saved become hours.
Take role-based training: Dermatology-specific workflows, order sets, and image tools make a real difference.
Build smart templates: Create macros and checklists for common diagnoses and procedures; integrate dermoscopy and photo fields.
Streamline image management: Standardize naming, body site tagging, and comparison workflows for serial documentation.
Use shortcuts: Keyboard commands, favorites, voice dictation, and task routing reduce clicks and errors.
Protect privacy: Enforce strong access controls, multifactor authentication, and good inbox triage; audit regularly.
How to Display EMR Proficiency (e.g., Epic, Cerner) Skills on Your Resume
12. Skin Cancer Screening
Skin cancer screening is a head-to-toe visual exam with dermoscopy as needed, tracking lesions over time and flagging change early.
Why It's Important
Early detection improves outcomes. Catching trouble before it runs wide saves tissue, time, and lives.
How to Improve Skin Cancer Screening Skills
Structure your eye and your system.
Hone visual frameworks: Apply ABCDE, the ugly duckling sign, and site-specific clues; use dermoscopy routinely.
Leverage imaging: Employ total body photography and sequential digital dermoscopy for high-risk patients or equivocal lesions.
Risk-stratify follow-up: Set intervals by personal/family history, immunosuppression, phototype, and UV exposure; document sun risk and counseling.
Use technology carefully: Consider decision-support tools as adjuncts—not diagnostics—and follow regulatory guidance and clinic policies.
Teach and engage: Coach patients on self-exams, sun protection, and when to seek care; provide simple take-home checklists.
How to Display Skin Cancer Screening Skills on Your Resume
