Monthly Archives: October 2018

National PA Week!

October 6-12th, 2018 is National Physicians Assistants week! All week we will be celebrating PAs and their contribution to the health care field. At Johnson Dermatology we have one amazing PA, Honey Schaumburg! She is my work sister and I can’t imagine my life at JD without her. She is the calm to my storm. She is wisdom to my insanity. She is the logic to my crazy. She is overall an amazing human and I wanted to dedicate this blog to her and why everyone should get to know her.

Reasons to celebrate Honey this week:

  1. She is a psoriasis expert. She is frequently on advisory boards for Psoriasis drugs called biologics to give her expert advice.
  2. She has a caring heart and loves to serve. She recently visited Peru for a medical mission trip.
  3. She can balance it all. She has a beautiful daughter, sees patients full time, is active in her church and still manages to work out and be a wife. I’m exhausted just thinking about living that life.
  4. She takes care of her team. Ask any of her nurses, she always makes sure they get plenty of time for lunch, feel appreciated, she honors and respects them. I feel sorry for my team just thinking about how spoiled Honeys team is at work!
  5. She is smart. Graduated top of her class, not many PAs can say that!
  6. She is Dermatology certified. A rare species in the PA world.
  7. She is beautiful. I mean not sure this is a professional attribute but it’s true so I had to add it to the list.
  8. She will listen to your needs. Honey always seeks to understand before being understood. I have always been jealous of her ability to listen and I think it’s one of her best traits that makes her a great health care provider.
  9. Honey takes action. In the specialty of biologics and psoriasis one could argue they are the most difficult medications to get to the patient. You can’t just write a prescription and pick them up at the pharmacy. It takes hours of writing letters to insurance companies, giving her staff desk time to do prior authorizations and applications for programs to get the drugs. It’s a lot of extra steps and Honey (and her biologic team) get it done when others probably wouldn’t take the time to do those extra steps for patients.
  10. She is organized. She always takes care of me when we travel. When we have something that has to be done she always reminds me. She is one of the most organized health care providers I know. Every patient benefits from that!

If you know a physicians assistant you should tell them how great they are this week! If you know Honey send some really great treats that I can get a bite of too! If you don’t know Honey and you have dermatological needs make an appointment! It’s easy as e-mailing appointments@johnsondermatology.com.

Happy National Physicians Week to all the Skintastic PAs out there! We appreciate you and all you do for our communities! Especially you Honey, the best work sister around! Muah, Nina

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Men Skincare

I honestly could not wait until Sunday to post this blog by Connor, one of our lab technicians. He wrote all about skincare for men! Did you know that 9% of all non surgical cosmetic procedures last year were men and 64% of those were heterosexual men? It’s officially time to get your anti-aging skin care routine in check boys!!!

 

This is for all of the guys out there. When you hear the word “skincare” your mind probably automatically goes to makeup, lotion, or some product which most guys would deem “feminine.” I’m here to tell you that is not the case. I know. Men are supposed to be MANLY! Growing beards, chopping down trees, and sharing a cold one with the boys. However, skincare covers a wide variety of products and methods developed for everyone and some even specifically for men. While you’re out there chopping down trees, are you wearing any type of sunscreen? “But Connor, we are men. We don’t need sunscreen.” Just stop right there.

At Johnson Dermatology I cannot tell you how many skin cancers I see come through the laboratory whether that is from biopsies or full-on outpatient surgeries. I would argue the skin cancers I see more often come from men than women! I’m sure a lot of us are familiar with G.I. Joe and one of his most famousphrases, “knowing is half the battle.” Keeping that in mind, some of the causes for the difference are the lack of knowledge men have about skincare as well as some biological differencesbetween men and women. Here’s some intel from the frontline:

Women apply sunscreen more often than men.
It is believed men have less fat under their skin as well as less collagen and elastin in their skin which makes them more likely to develop skin cancers.
From ages 15 to 39, men are 55 percent more likely to die of melanoma than women in the same age group.
An estimated 9,320 people will die of melanoma in the U.S. in 2018: of those, 5,990 will be men and 3,330 will be women.
Men are twice as likely to develop basal cell carcinoma and three times as likely to develop squamous cell carcinoma.
The susceptibility becomes worse the more you age.
Some researchers hypothesize the hormone, estrogen, is a factor in preventing the development of melanoma as well as other cancers.

There is a lot of good information not mentioned here that isoutlined in these articles so I’ll leave links to them down below.

From this information, we can see that we men need to take better care of our skin. I know I haven’t for most of my life and I’ve had a few blistering sunburns which increases your chances of developing skin cancer.7 However, the best thing I can do now is to change the way I treat my skin. I may not be able to fully repair the damage that has been done, but I can take stepsprevent it from going any further. That means choosing the right products to use for the protection of my skin.

We guys tend to not think/care about the quality of skin productsor a lot of things for that matter. If it’s cheap and seems to do the job then why go with anything else right? While I agree with that mindset for most things, you should not skimp on sunscreen. Yes, the sunscreen at the convenience store is easy to grab, but be sun smart. Go to Walmart, Target, Walgreens, or somewhere like them and pick up a decent sunscreen like Nina’s choices of Bare Republic or Pacifica (at least SPF 30, fellas!). JD also offers a wonderful selection of sun protectants from SkinMedica that are proven to work! What’s even better is they go on dry so it won’t affect the scruff and they don’t run when they get wet.

For the women with men in their lives, be sure your guy takescare of his skin. We may do a lot of stupid things that may make you wonder how in the world we’ve managed to live this long(see image below), but maybe being sun smart would be a good place to start getting us on the right track. When he goes out to chop trees, watch a football game, hunt, fish, or whatever elsewe guys like to do, tell him to put on plenty of sunscreen and even a wide-brim hat. If he argues, give him “the look” (scariest thing I’ve seen from my mother).

http://pic.epicalm.com/picpicpic6_11/19_Reasons_Why_Women_Live_Longer_Than_Men.jpg

As an important side note, Johnson Dermatology offers special skin care kits specifically designed for men. Just ask for the regiMEN. It has everything you’ll need to take good care of your manly skin so you can continue to do the manly things we men like to do and look good while doing it.

Be SkinSmart to be SkinSafe so you can be skintastic!