AAD Career Launch: A guide to success for early-career dermatologists
Moving from residency into full-time practice is a critical phase in a young dermatologist’s career. While your clinical skills are sharp, success in today’s environment demands mastery of a complex set of non-clinical responsibilities, from practice management and finance to regulatory compliance and team leadership.
This definitive AAD guide for young physicians is an essential resource for launching your career. We provide the expert guidance you need to make informed decisions. We offer tools to reduce your administrative burden. We even help with personal finance. Use this guide to help you build a thriving, fulfilling, and successful dermatology career.
Need more personalized guidance? The AAD Flash Mentoring Program connects you with a dermatologist who can share their wisdom — no long-term commitment, just someone who can listen and advise.
Starting out in practice
Starting your career as a dermatologist is exciting, but it’s also packed with many decisions. Should you join a group or go solo? What should you look for in a job offer? How do you even set up a practice?
If you choose to join a group, we can help you find the right job, ask important questions of your potential employer, and understand your employment contract. If you open a solo practice, we offer guidance on setting up your office, building out policies, and hiring and retaining staff.
Getting started as a practicing dermatologist
Use our extensive getting started guide to help you decide on the type of practice that aligns with you. The guide also offers additional information on contracts, negotiations, and compliance.
Choose the kind of dermatology practice that fits you
Choosing a practice that fits you is central to launching your dermatology career, with implications for your clinical practice, compensation, and work-life balance. This guide will help you understand the benefits and challenges associated with different types of practice.
Group
Group practices usually involve collaboration and sharing of resources, but that may come with reduced individual autonomy and control.
Independent practices typically involve greater autonomy, flexibility, and control over clinical and business decisions, but maybe require longer work hours and increased business responsibilities and risk.
Large academic or government institutions may offer opportunities for research or more complex cases, often with good benefits and work-life balance. However, they may offer less independence and lower salaries.
Use the AAD’s resources to find a job that aligns with your career goals. AAD Career Compass is a job board for dermatology job-seekers. Review open dermatology positions, use career resources, and more.
Evaluate potential employers
Review our questions to ask a potential dermatology employer before making your decision. Areas to consider include compensation and benefits, staff and technology supports, schedule and workload flexibility, and business interests.
Understand your employment contract
Your employment contract ultimately governs the terms of your work. Use our resources to understand the parts of your employment contract. Our guidance points to contract language with a direct impact on your work, including bonus terms, business expenses, performance evaluations, and more.
Negotiate your contract
Use our tips on negotiating your contract to help you arrive at the best terms for your employment, including salary, benefits, and more. We’ll help you negotiate like a pro, so you can fight for what’s reasonable without undermining your position.
Malpractice insurance is an important protection for you and your practice, but it’s easy to be confused by exclusions and coverage limits. Learn the basics and what to watch out for in our DermWorld article Malpractice insurance 101.
Work culture
You might not give much thought to work culture when considering an employer, but the truth is that it has a major impact on your success and happiness. Hear pragmatic tips from a dermatologist on evaluating and adapting to work culture when you’re new to the group.
Practice finance and operations
Mastering the finances and operations of a dermatology practice is essential for long-term success. This section provides the critical resources and expert guidance you need to become savvy about the non-clinical side of dermatology, from coding and compliance to private payer contracts and practice promotion.
Understand practice finance
Access our growing resources on practice finance, designed to be useful for dermatologists without a background in business.
The AAD is here to help with coding. Our Coding Resource Center gives you pragmatic guidance on the codes dermatologists use most. We also provide quick coder guides you can download and use at a glance, and our coding staff write regular articles on hot topics for Derm Coding Consult.
Practice insurance
Malpractice insurance is familiar, but what about all the other kinds of insurance a dermatology practice needs? That insurance may include workmen’s compensation, disability, cybersecurity, business interruption insurance in case of disaster, and more. Learn the ins and outs of practice insurance in our recent DermWorld feature.
Compliance and other policies
Compliance with HIPAA, OSHA, and other regulations is another administrative burden dermatologists must navigate. The AAD offers practical, convenient guidance on compliance and other policies you’ll need to meet government requirements.
Medicare physician payment
The AAD also supports dermatologists with Medicare and MIPS, the Merit-based Incentive Payment System. Each summer and fall, we analyze the government’s Medicare Physician Fee Schedule for the year ahead, publishing tables that show the impact on RVUs used by dermatologists. The Academy also advocates fiercely for physician payment reform, our sole federal advocacy priority.
Private payer essentials
Dermatologists typically receive reimbursement from a variety of private payers, along with Medicare. The AAD offers a variety of private payer resources to help you succeed, including in-depth guidance on what you should look out for in private payer contracts.
Promote your practice
The AAD also provides resources to help you promote your practice and follow best practices on social media, with more to come in 2026. These resources include key messages, PR and media guidance, tips on how to hand negative comments and trolls, and more.
Administrative burden
One of the biggest shocks of transitioning from residency to practice is the administrative burden dermatologists face. This administrative burden includes prior authorization, claim denials, MIPS reporting requirements, and more. Fortunately, in addition to advocating to reduce or eliminate these challenges, the AAD offers resources to help mitigate them all.
Access tools to alleviate administrative burden
The AAD offers a wealth of tools and guidance to help alleviate your administrative burden. These include aids for prior authorization, private payers, EHR documentation, and more.
Prior authorization
Members rave about the AAD’s Prior Authorization Appeal Letter Tool, which can help you quickly create appeal letters with medical rationales and references written by AAD members. The tool covers more than 70 drugs; content is reviewed and updated annually.
Claim denials and payment reductions
Another tool can help you make the best case when you appeal insurer decisions. Whether your payment is reduced when using modifier 25 or an add-on code, cut in half for an excision repair, or slashed for patch testing or a pre-Mohs diagnostic biopsy, the AAD’s Private Payer Appeal Letter Tool can generate a letter you can send to a medical director to seek proper reimbursement.
Effective team management is a cornerstone of a thriving dermatology practice. Your staff are the face of patient care and the backbone of operations. But leading a team as an early-career dermatologist comes with its own challenges. Young physicians are expected to lead, but they typically aren’t the owner. Many may start practice with relatively little training in oversight of staff and HR requirements. The AAD is here to help with tools and resources. We can help you understand the basics, hone your skills, and demonstrate your leadership as you grow your career. We’ll be adding more resources on team management throughout 2026!
Listen to the Career Launch podcast series
Access our Dialogues in DermatologyCareer Launch podcast series, with firsthand guidance from dermatologists on a wide variety of early-career subjects.
Staffing and human resources
Dermatologists often have significant oversight of other clinicians and staff. Use the AAD’s staffing and HR resources to help you understand the basics, including onboarding, training, performance evaluations, and more.
Leadership skills
The AAD’s Leadership Forum is designed for early-career dermatologists who are ready to take the next step in their careers. The forum brings together senior leaders and participants for a popular weekend program. Learn vital skills to help you become a more effective leader in your practice and professional organizations at the Leadership Forum.
Leading when you’re not the owner
Early-career dermatologists often have to navigate the tension between being the leader of the care team but not the owner of the practice. That is, you’re a leader, but you’re not necessarily the boss. Read a DermWorld interview with a young physician who has become a leader even in a large multispecialty group.
Personal finance
A career in medicine offers significant earning potential, but the financial landscape for a newly practicing dermatology is complex. You may be managing significant student loan debt, navigating decisions about mortgages and retirement, and making major purchases, all while establishing your practice. The AAD’s personal finance resources are designed to help you secure your financial future. We’ll be adding many more resources here in 2026!
Financial foundations
Building strong financial habits can create a stable foundation for long-term success, reduced stress, and focus on providing exceptional patient care. Use our financial foundations for early-career dermatologists to support your journey to personal and professional financial success.
Retirement planning
Small steps you take now can have a significant impact later in life. The benefit of putting money aside as early as you can do it in a reasonable way is what we call the magic of compounding. But you still have to be able to live, often balancing retirement savings against debt. Learn more about how to create a healthy retirement plan in DermWorld.
Scope of practice: Protecting the specialty
The practice of medicine is constantly challenged by forces that threaten to dilute the quality of patient care — most notably, the growing issue of scope of practice creep and the encroachment of non-physicians. This challenge is fundamental to patient safety and the future of physician-led dermatologic care. The Academy is dedicated to protecting the specialty and the high standard of expertise you have achieved.
How the AAD fights for you
Learn more about how we work to protect the specialty from encroachment. We educate the public, demand truth in advertising, build coalitions in the house of medicine, and advocate relentlessly in statehouses.
Scope of practice
The Academy is addressing creep in the scope of medicine with a robust public education campaign, efforts to strengthen dermatology’s place in the house of medicine, and extensive federal, state, and grassroots advocacy activities. When it comes to scope of practice, the Academy has your back.
Encroachment of non-physicians
What can dermatologists do to protect against the encroachment of non-physicians? Sometimes, their claims may rise to the level of false advertising under state law. Learn more from our recent DermWorld feature on when you should report false advertising claims to state authorities.
