A Conversation With Neil A. Shah, MD

Dr Shah is a board-certified dermatologist, founder, and medical director of Clarus Dermatology, a private practice near Minneapolis, MN. He graduated from the University of Minnesota Medical School, Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Society, in 2007. Dr Shah completed his residency at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, with an internship in internal medicine. His clinical practice interests include skin cancer and reconstructive surgery as well as medical and cosmetic dermatology. He actively teaches family medicine and dermatology residents, holding an adjunct faculty position at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. Outside of clinical practice, Dr Shah enjoys travel, reading, sports, and shooting. On the weekends, you will find him riding around on his tractor with his three little children.

Q. What part of your work gives you the most pleasure?
A. Teaching and mentoring are the most pleasurable parts of my job. This can take the form of guiding a junior employee through career choices or helping a mid-career physician optimize their surgical outcomes. Helping people learn and grow is very rewarding.

Q. Are an understanding & appreciation of the humanities important in dermatology and why?
A. An understanding of life outside medicine is critical for physicians because medicine occurs within a larger context of society. This understanding can take many forms, but at its core, appreciation for subjects outside of medicine helps you contextualize the interactions you have with your patients. Our patients are all unique individuals, not members of various categories or groups, and the more outside experiences we have, the better prepared we become to begin to understand our individual patients.

Q. What is the best piece of advice you have received and from whom?
A. There is a practicing physician, Dr Peter Attia, who has had a profound impact on my practice. Dr Attia is a general surgeon by training, but his focus is now on health and longevity. As a result of following his fantastic podcast and website, we now emphasize addressing the underlying comorbid metabolic issues in our patients, particularly those with acne, psoriasis, and hidradenitis suppurativa. We have been pleasantly surprised with how much we can alter the cutaneous disease state through counseling on sleep, diet, and exercise in addition to pharmacologic approaches. There remains much work to be done on researching these domains in dermatologic diseases. 

Q. What is your greatest regret?
A. My only real regret, and one that I share with my wife, is not starting our family earlier and having more children. We are profoundly grateful for our three healthy, beautiful, young children. However, we started our family later in life due to a perceived inconvenience of having children during medical training. The truth is that children, like all things worth doing in life, are neither easy nor convenient. I encourage all students and trainees to not delay the true joys of life: marriage and building a family. Medicine can wait.

Q. What is the greatest political danger in the field of dermatology?
A. The greatest danger we face as physicians and dermatologists is the loss of our professional identity. As physicians, our duty is to provide the best possible care to the individual patient in front of us. Any distractions from that goal—whether they are electronic medical recorsd, government mandates, or spurious “value-based” paradigms—represent a danger to patients and a moral injury to physicians.