Medical photography for dermatology E referrals

The medical team looking after you has requested a review of your skin condition by a dermatologist (a doctor who specialises in looking after skin).

The first step is to have medical photographs taken by our colleagues in the Medical Photography Department. The photographs will be made available to the teams looking after you in hospital.

The medical photographs allow the dermatologist to provide quicker advice on diagnosis and management than waiting to be seen face to face (as they may be in a clinic or at a different hospital site).

Once the photographs have been taken, please allow 48 hours Monday to Thursday or 72 hours if the photographs are taken on a Friday, for your ward team to receive a response.

If the dermatologist viewing your photos feels that a face-to-face consultation is necessary, they will visit you on the ward, but in many cases this is not needed.

You can choose not to have photographs taken; this will not affect your care. However, it may take a lot longer to receive a dermatology review.

In rare cases, a skin condition may need an urgent face to face review. This may take place before the medical photography team can arrange to visit the ward. In this instance photography is still useful as it allows the dermatologists to document what the condition was like and help with the management of the issue.

At the time of the photography, we will ask for your written consent to allow the images taken to be filed in your health record and to be made available to the teams looking after you while you are in hospital. We will also ask for your consent for the images to be used for teaching or publication.

If you consent for teaching or publication, your images will be de-identified (made anonymous) and may be seen and used in the wider healthcare community.

You can opt out of consenting for teaching or publication at any time. However, please be aware in the event of publication it may not be possible to retrieve published images.