Letter from the journal: Improving diagnostic acumen and patient outcomes.

The choice to pursue a career in medicine comes with an obligation to engage in lifelong learning. For us to continue providing the best possible care for our patients in a constantly changing world, our knowledge base must continue to expand. In recent decades, there has been an explosion of new medical information, diagnostic techniques, and treatments that have been true game changers, even for some of our most challenging conditions. To keep up, we rely heavily on our journals and specialty society meetings to stay abreast of new developments in our field. Journals and meetings can also help fill fundamental gaps in our education. Most of us learned our specialty through textbooks, lectures, clinical images, and patient encounters. Although these resources are key to resident education, they have also been subject to historical flaws and blind spots. Authors and lecturers drawing from their own lived experiences for illustrative images and clinical detail may have had educational backgrounds and practices limited in diversity. Skin diseases present with a wide array of physical findings across all skin tones. As such, it is critical that our diversity and inclusion efforts be intentional and thoughtful. Truly great dermatologists are those who can recognize and treat the full spectrum of diseases at all the varied stages of their evolution, on different anatomic locations of the body, and in different skin types. Structural racism1What is structural racism? AMA.https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/health-equity/what-structural-racismDate accessed: May 12, 2023Google Scholar has also played a prominent role in poorer disease outcomes among historically marginalized populations. Thankfully, the world is changing in many positive ways, among which is the new availability of digital resources that place a wide variety of clinical images within our reach. We recognize our responsibility to our patients and the next generation of dermatologists to learn and teach the full spectrum of disease presentations. Therefore, we have added new requirements to the Instructions to Authors for CME and Clinical Review articles that emphasize the value to our specialty of images demonstrating the full spectrum of dermatologic disease in patients of all ages, genders, and ethnicities, and those from different environments. We encourage our authors to include images and descriptions beyond a single representation of a skin disorder. In doing so, they will help all of us gain a better appreciation of the wide spectrum of dermatologic disease, thereby improving our ability to diagnose and treat patients of all backgrounds who entrust us with their care. None disclosed.