Help identify a skin condition
Learn more about dermatology
Volunteer to write for us
Help identify a skin condition
DermNet Editor in Chief wins top dermatology award
In 2021, DermNet NZ welcomed Doctor Ian Coulson as the site’s Editor-in-Chief. DrCoulson has a storied career in dermatology, not just as a clinician but as a publisher and teacher as well. It’s no wonder then that this year he was awarded the Sir Archibald Grey Medal, the highest honour for dermatologists in the United Kingdom from the British Association of Dermatology. When I spoke to him the week after the award ceremony, he seemed to have received it with typical English humility.
“[The award] is said to be for someone who’s had an exceptional career in dermatology in the UK. I don’t think I’ve been that exceptional. I have been enthusiastic, and I think really that’s been my main asset. One can’t help but be enthusiastic, with patients with considerable need, and as time goes on, more and more we can do to help.”
As he describes it, “essentially, the consultants had no other job for two hours than to teach us and the registrars just fed them fantastic material upon which [the clinicians] taught.At the end of the term, I think there were about 12 of us, we had a little exam and I won. I thought “This is easy, all you’ve got to do is recognize patterns”. Of course, I’ve spent the last forty-odd years realizing it’s not quite as simple as that.”
It was at this point that Ian decided to make dermatology his specialty. He began his placement as a senior house officer at St John’s Hospital for a year, then took a registrar post at St. George Hospital in South London, rotating around the nearby hospitals. St. George borders on areas with very ethnically varied populations, such as Brixton, home to a large Afro-Caribbean population, andTooting with its noted Indian and Pakistani immigrant communities. Ian notes that that this overlap of demographics was a boon to his dermatological training, as he gained experience in treating skin conditions and how they appeared in different populations.
Ian practiced dermatology in London for eight years before moving to Burnley, Lancashire in the north of England, where he has resided for the past 32 years as a consultant. In addition, Ian is one of the founding authors and editors of The Treatment of Skin Disease, now inits sixth edition, and has previously been a section editor of the British Journal of Dermatology and the president of the North of England Dermatology Society.
One of Ian’s dedicated passions around dermatology is teaching; he has been the president of the educational foundation The Dowling Club, which mentors new dermatologists in theUK, and he makes educational patient information videos on YouTube demonstrating the practical applications of skin treatments.
When I asked what he thought had been the highlight of his career, Ian responded that it had to be the advent of the internet, which has radically changed how dermatologists access information andc ommunicate with the wider dermatological community. He gave me an example from one of his own cases.
“I saw a child on Boxing Day about five years ago. The child had just been born and had a skin disease the like of which I’d never seen. The chips were down, because the parents had had a child about six years previously with exactly the same skin condition and that child sadly died of respiratory failure at about age 4 or 5. And no-one knew what it was. Within about three minutes on the internet, I was able to say “Heavens above! This is what it is!”.
As it turned out, the mystery condition had only been described four years previously.“It’s called ichthyosis prematurity syndrome. Within twenty-four hours I had been in contact with the first author of that series’ papers, sent them images, he said “Yep, that looks just like it, would you like us to do the confirmatory test?”.
“The next day we sent blood over to Norway where the condition had been described.Again, using networking colleagues in the UK, within a month some really clever colleagues in London had determined which base pair of amino acids on the genome was wrong in this particular mutation. A little thing like that! Just being persistent, putting the right words into Google and then using your network of colleagues, that really was a highlight.”
“And I’m delighted to say, most important of all, that [while] this condition gives rise to a respiratory disease but provided that the children survive that initial assault on their respiratory system, they actually lead a pretty normal life, with just a bit of slightly red, slightly scaly skin. So there is a really happy ending. I should say that happy ending [has] got very little to do with me; that was to do with the good medicine of my colleagues, but at least we can say “this is what the condition is”, so that was quite special”.
During the global lockdowns, Ian began hosting lectures over Zoom with dermatology trainees, and had taken up a lockdown project fixing up a holiday cottage. He had just put his paintbrushes down when an offer from the DermNet NZ trustees came through.
“One of the trustees emailed me and said ‘Would I be interested?’. DermNet, I knew a reasonable bit about because it’s something that I’ve used for the last 20years. Obviously, it is the world’s biggest, most comprehensive free resource in dermatology. I was quite flattered to be asked!”
Since Ian began his role as Editor in Chief, DermNet has grown the content team, improved the internal publishing system, and introduced a faster website. There has been an average of 4.1 million monthly pageviews and over 1.6 million monthly users on the site from every country in the world.
More recently Ian wrote a quiz course where participants can learn more about dermatology through real life case reports. The quizzes are sent via email over a 10 week period and feature a range of high quality images along with the questions and answers. Over 1400 participants have joined the course so far and more continue to join every day.
DermNet’s mission is to be the worlds number one online free dermatology resource and we are privileged to have Dr Coulson’s passion for education, down to earth personality and incredible knowledge to further as part of our team.
Other articles
Online Information-Seeking About Potential Breast Cancer Symptoms: Capturing Online Behavior With an Internet Browsing Tracking Tool – Afrodita Marcu et al., J Med Internet Res, 2019
Wholesale secrets – Strategic Direction, 2013
Tag Team – Constance Holden et al., Science, 2006
News from Avatar Editors – Dan Hunter, Science, 2008
Free App to Help Patients Ask Appropriate Questions – Rita Rubin, Journal of American Medical Association, 2019
Population-Based Analysis of Histologically Confirmed Melanocytic Proliferations Using Natural Language Processing – Jason P. Lott et al., JAMA Dermatology, 2018
Association of Search Engine Queries for Chest Pain With Coronary Heart Disease Epidemiology – Conor Senecal et al., JAMA Cardiology, 2018
Evaluation of Bedside Diagnostic Accuracy, Learning Curve, and Challenges for a Novice Reflectance Confocal Microscopy Reader for Skin Cancer Detection In Vivo – Manu Jain et al., JAMA Dermatology, 2018
Mapping Language Networks Using the Structural and Dynamic Brain Connectomes – John Del Gaizo et al., eNeuro, 2017
Nemaura prepares 2nd-gen SugarBeat patch for trials – Fink Densford, Mass Device, 2017
