The UC Davis Department of Dermatology is located in
Sacramento, California. Our department is made up of
23 clinical faculty members, six research faculty members
and 11 volunteer faculty members. Our residency program
consists of 10 residents. We accept three residents each year.
Residents rotate at the UC Davis Dermatology clinic, Sacramento
VA Medical Center/Valley Division (Mather, CA) and UC Davis
Medical Center for hospital consults. There is one procedural
dermatology fellow each year.
The resident rotation schedule emphasizes general clinical
dermatology in the first year with increasing inpatient hospital
consult, dermatopathology, and dermatologic and Mohs
surgery experience in the second and third years. Our general
clinical dermatology rotations are held at UC Davis Dermatology
clinic or at Sacramento VA. While the clinical rotations are
not grouped into sub-specialty medical dermatology rotations,
there are sub-specialty clinics mixed among general dermatology
clinics. These sub-specialty clinics include: oral medicine
and mucosal vulvar clinic; cosmetics; excision; melanoma;
vesiculobullous disease; wound healing and ulcer clinic; and
teledermatology. In addition, residents may rotate several
times per year in rheumatology and allergy clinics. Finally,
each resident participates in Resident Continuity Clinics twice
weekly, on average. These clinics are resident-run with attending
staffing and encourage resident autonomy and continuity
between the residents and their patients. UC Davis has been a
pioneer in telemedicine and our Dermatology Department has
established an active teledermatology clinic using both live interactions
and store-and-forward consultations. In addition to
participating in these clinics, residents also take part in an International
Teledermatology Grand Rounds quarterly.
One of the many highlights of our program is the quality of the
specialty rotations. Specialty rotations include dermatopathol-
ogy, dermatologic surgery and hospital consult service. On the
surgical rotation, the resident works one on one with a Mohs
surgeon. The resident spends approximately 50 percent of his
or her time assisting in Mohs surgery with the attending and
the procedural fellow and 50 percent of the time as primary
surgeon in excision clinics. Included in this rotation are two
nail surgery clinics in which the resident is primary surgeon
on nail avulsions and chemical matricectomy cases. The surgical
resident participates actively in surgery journal club, book
review and closure conference. On the dermatopathology rotation,
one morning per week is spent reviewing unknown slide
sets. Every afternoon is spent in one-on-one sign-out with the
dermatopathology attending. The hospital consult service sees,
on average, one to three consults per day at UC Davis Medical
Center, a large tertiary care hospital in Northern California.
The rotations consist of four week blocks. In the first year of
training, each resident will have one block each of surgery,
dermatopathology and hospital consult service. Second- and
third-year residents typically have two months each of surgery,
dermatopathology and consult service. The remaining rota
