Improving skin cancer care with a general practitioner training programme

Skin cancer is the most common form of cancer in the world and the number of patients diagnosed with skin cancer is growing every year. Luckily, most patients with skin cancer can be treated and cured when diagnosed early. General practitioners play an important part in skin cancer care. Optimal recognition of skin cancer by the general practitioner and referral to a dermatologist when necessary are considered very important to make sure every patient with skin cancer can be treated as soon as possible and in the best way. Previous research showed that general practitioners find it hard to distinguish skin cancer from benign, harmless spots on the skin. This leads to a lot of unnecessary referrals to dermatologists and longer waiting lists before a patient can be seen by a dermatologist. In this study from the Netherlands, 83 out of 194 general practitioners in the Nijmegen area were specifically trained on skin cancer care. Afterwards, referral letters to dermatologists from this trained group of general practitioners were studied and compared with referral letters to dermatologists by general practitioners who did not follow the skin cancer training. We found that general practitioners who followed the skin cancer training were more often able to make the right diagnosis, leading to fewer potentially unnecessary referrals to dermatologists. This helps to minimize waiting lists and to make sure patients with skin cancer can still be treated in the fastest and best way in the future, when more and more people are expected to get skin cancer and the number of dermatologists is limited. Linked Article :  Marra et al. Br J Dermatol 2021; 184 :538–544.