Best Tips for Building and Marketing a Dermatologic Practice

To kick off the 2nd day of informative sessions at the American Society for Dermatologic Surgery (ASDS) Meeting, Mona Gohara, MD, associate clinical professor of dermatology at the Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, and chair of the Media Relations Work Group of ASDS, presented best practices for young dermatologists to develop their brand and market themselves.¹ She stressed that relationships and engagement with communities are crucial while building or designing a dermatologic practice.

Video transcript:

Hi, my name is Mona Gohara. I'm a board-certified dermatologist in New Haven. I'm in private practice and an associate clinical professor of dermatology at Yale School of Medicine. So, this session really was targeted towards younger dermatologists trying to find their way in our big dermatologic worlds, and giving them tips and tricks on social media, how to establish themselves as key opinion leaders, how to work with industry, how to manage your reputation; all of these things that are very important in terms of starting in the derm worlds can be overwhelming. We really just tried to distill it into nice little bullet points and snippets to make things a little bit easier.

One of the highlights that I think was really important was understanding your passion in dermatology, what do you really want to do? And you can focus your entire development, career development professionally and personally, around that. Mine, for example, is diversity, equity, and inclusion in dermatology. Know thyself, as some famous philosopher said that. But I'm paraphrasing. That's one of the most important things.

The second thing is to really understand that in this day and age, building a practice isn't just about hiring people. And knowing dermatology, sometimes it's about having a presence outside the office, like on social media. So, this can be overwhelming. You can do it yourself or hire somebody to do it. But our session really focused on the fact that this is indeed an important part of dermatology.

The third thing I would say is that yes, all of these things can kind of seem like they're a lot, but there's always somebody to help. So, when you don't really know what direction to go in, or you don't really know how you can proceed, find yourself a mentor. The mentors are abundant, particularly in every single organization. There are opportunities to find mentorship, and if they don't know the answer, they know somebody who does.

Transcript edited for clarity.

Reference:

1. Gohara M. How to Build and Design a Dermatologic Practice. Presented at: 2022 American Society of Dermatologic Surgery Annual Meeting, Denver Colorado, October 7-10, 2022.