Is "Color weakness" a problem for being a Dermatologist?

[HolemesLee]

I was diagnosed color weakness(specificly,Deuteranomaly) when I enterned med school.
I was very interested in Derm and would like to apply for it as my future career. When in pathology class or Derm rotation, I did sometimes have difficulty telling the right diagnosis.
But I'm not sure it's because of my lack of experience or the vision problem.
I have done lots of research about this online. However, most of the advice were based on "color blindness", not " color weakness" .

Is "color weakness" a problem for being a Dermatologist?

Any replies and suggestions highly appreciated!!

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[asmallchild]

I was diagnosed color weakness(specificly,Deuteranomaly) when I enterned med school.
I was very interested in Derm and would like to apply for it as my future career. When in pathology class or Derm rotation, I did sometimes have difficulty telling the right diagnosis.
But I'm not sure it's because of my lack of experience or the vision problem.
I have done lots of research about this online. However, most of the advice were based on "color blindness", not " color weakness" .

Is "color weakness" a problem for being a Dermatologist?

Any replies and suggestions highly appreciated!!

Not going to be an advantage but also not going to be a huge problem, one of my former attendings was color blind. She always said it made path a little trickier than it already is

 

[Dermography]

I heard from a few of the older attendings that some derm programs used to administer a color-blind test on all their applicants. But I guess color-weakness might not be as big of an issue.

Having a good perception of colors, in my opinion, does help with derm diagnoses both macroscopically and microscopically. However, it probably doesn't matter as much if you are more procedurally-focused, with the caveat that you still have to interpret frozen sections in Mohs.

 

[doc MD]

I was diagnosed color weakness(specificly,Deuteranomaly) when I enterned med school.
I was very interested in Derm and would like to apply for it as my future career. When in pathology class or Derm rotation, I did sometimes have difficulty telling the right diagnosis.
But I'm not sure it's because of my lack of experience or the vision problem.
I have done lots of research about this online. However, most of the advice were based on "color blindness", not " color weakness" .

Is "color weakness" a problem for being a Dermatologist?

Any replies and suggestions highly appreciated!!

if you already know that you will have difficulty based on experience with histo, this will be the same thing when doing path; but instead of just doing a semester of histology, this will be part of your career.

 

[upairman]

As a dermatology resident with some color issues I thought I would chime in. I cannot pass the color plate tests for the life of me where you are suppose to see certain numbers but have always been able to pass the farnsworth lantern test easily. Several Ophthos labeled me as color confused. I have had no difficulty in clinical dermatology and also have not noticed any deficits in pathology either. I have noticed though that sometimes it will take me slightly longer than another resident to clearly see certain things like mucin microscopically however. I think the major thing to guide your decision is how bad your color vision really is. As a medical student I am not surprised that you often have difficulty with a diagnosis because Dermatology is very difficult at first. On the other hand if you are having a hard time telling whether something is erythematous or has a bluish hue that could definately be problematic. Otherwise good luck deciding! I definately think that Derm is the best field in medicine.

 

[Notme123]

Just wanted to chime in as well. I am probable also "color weak" with deuteranomaly and I fail the Ishihara test pretty badly. However, have not had any trouble with clinical derm. I do have trouble in general with dark blue/purple, and very faint green vs. orange... Not that I don't see the color, but I may confuse the two. I'm terrible at matching ties to clothes.

That being said, I have not had any problem with clinical derm. Derm is tough when you first start, so part of your issue may be inexperience more so than color blindness. Also, there are MANY other facets to diagnosis than color. Interestingly, even for people who are able to distinguish colors much better than I can, there is still a fair amount of subjective interpretation.

Good luck!

 

[Decicco]

Red-green colorblindness is common and not a problem. However, you need to be aware of it and may need to rely on other clues for the rare patient or pathology slide where it comes up. Many outstanding dermatologists have red-green colorblindness.