Clinical Tips: Enjoying Your Practice

Tips 1-3: Enjoying Your Daily Practice More
1. Do not overbook. There is a pandemic, and patients will understand a delay in appointments.
2. Take time to relax by finishing your office work earlier than you would normally. For example, if you normally finish at 4:30 PM, then make yourself finish at 4 PM.
3. Get a free music subscription service, such as Spotify or Pandora, and play easy listening music in each room to relax the patient (and you!).

Dr Ron Vender
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

Tip 4: Label Your Syringes
For those of us administer two different concentrations of botulinum toxin (eg, low concentration for precise dosing of perioral lines vs higher concentration in areas where higher doses are needed), it is a very good idea to have your staff mark the flat part of the plungers on syringes intended for low concentration botulinum toxin with red marker, so that you do not mix the syringes up when you are injecting. I also have some ultrafine 0.3 mL, 31-gauge syringers marked with blue and used those to inject tiny bits of hyaluronic acid (pull out the plunger, insert a bit of filler, then put the plunger back in). Same idea: you do not want to confuse the syringes with one another!

Dr Kevin C. Smith
Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada

Tip 5: Educating Nondermatologists About a Rare Side Effect
Although rare, the side effect of liver failure and death from oral terbinafine has been reported. Be careful with oral systemic therapy for uncultured “tinea” of nails. Although oral terbinafine is considered the safest oral antifungal, family physicians and advanced practice clinicians should be made aware that risks do remain.

Dr Richard Lewis
Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada