Dr Stoff is associate professor of dermatology at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, GA. He practices general dermatology and dermatopathology at Emory and teledermatology consultation through the Atlanta VA Medical Center. Dr Stoff received a Bachelor of Arts in psychology from the University of Virginia in Charlottes- ville and his MD from the University of Texas-Southwestern Medical School in Dallas.
Dr Stoff completed residency, dermatopathology fellow- ship, and a Master of Arts in Bioethics at Emory. He is now a senior faculty fellow at the Emory Center for Ethics, and he serves as incoming chair of the Ethics Committee of the American Academy of Dermatology and outgoing chair of the Ethics Committee of the American Society of Dermato- pathology. He is also co-director of the Ethics Residency Track through the Emory Office of Graduate Medical Education.
Q. What part of your work gives you the most pleasure?
A. I find the ability to form lasting therapeutic relationships with patients and mentoring relationships with trainees to be the most rewarding aspects of what I do. I am also continually challenged by the quest for developing new knowledge and questioning existing dogma. The diversity of scholarly activities and potential for collaboration in an academic practice are also really exciting to me.
Q. Who was your hero/mentor and why?
A. I have many mentors in dermatology to whom I am really grateful. Dr Alan Menter instilled in me a love of dermatology and appreciation for the range of scholarly activities dermatologists engage in. Dr Bob Swerlick taught me how to think critically about dermatology and medicine in general. Dr Jane Grant-Kels taught me that bioethics can be an academic niche in dermatology. She also taught me how to stand up for what is right. There are many others!
Q. What is the best piece of advice you have received and from whom?
A. The first example I can think of is more a guiding principle than advice. In their landmark book, Principles of Bioethics, Tom Beauchamp and Jim Childress make the case that simply because some medical decisions are low stakes (ie, not life or death), that does not necessarily mean that those decisions are low complexity. In fact, because some decisions are low stakes and are therefore very sensitive to patient preferences, they are quite complex. This idea is what draws me to the study of bioethics in dermatology!
In personal relationships, Dr Grant-Kels once advised me that to make a happy marriage between working professionals, each spouse should believe that he or she is doing 60% of the work but only actually doing 40% of the work and 20% never gets done! I took from this that while it is important to commit to sharing the work of raising a family, it is also important to let some things slide. Although, knowing Dr Grant-Kels, I cannot believe that she would ever let 20% of the work go undone!
Q. Are an understanding & appreciation of the humanities important in dermatology and why?
A. Humanities are critically important to dermatology and to medicine in general. For example, bioethics provides essential moral frameworks for the work that we do as clinicians, researchers, educators, and administrators. It provides tools for analysis, which, most fundamentally, help us decide the right thing to do. Bioethics also provides necessary checks on our practices as medicine evolves in order to avoid missteps like those of the past.
Q. What is the greatest danger in the field of dermatology?
A. In my view, the biggest threat to the field is neglect of underserved populations of patients. In a system in which the demand of patients greatly exceeds the supply of dermatologists, we as a specialty must devise a method for how we distribute our limited resources based on the needs of patients, not our own needs as providers. Putting patients’ welfare above our own is a fundamental part of professionalism. If we compromise our professional duties, the public trust in our profession will erode and the autonomy we enjoy will diminish.
