Preparing for a dermatology appointment mostly means arriving able to answer three things: what changed, when it changed, and what has already been tried. Bring your products and medicines, wear nothing on the skin being examined, and write your questions down before you go in.
This page describes how dermatology appointments generally work in the United Kingdom. Arrangements differ from one country to another.
A dermatology appointment tends to be brief, and much of what gets asked in one is information you already have. Whether you can produce it in the room is a different matter. The gap between the two is where preparation pays off, and closing it takes about twenty minutes at a kitchen table the night before the appointment.
What will you actually be asked?
Almost every dermatology appointment opens with the same three questions in some form: what changed, when did it change, and what has been done about it since. They sound simple. Answered vaguely, they eat most of the appointment; answered precisely, they take ninety seconds and leave the rest of it for the part that matters.
Timing is the answer people struggle with most, because skin changes slowly and memory compresses. Somebody who says “a while ago” and somebody who says “around the middle of March, after a fortnight of very cold weather” have given the clinician completely different amounts to work with. Nobody expects a diary. An approximate month, tied to something memorable, is plenty.
The third question catches people out for a different reason. Most of us have tried more than we remember: a cream from a pharmacy, something a relative recommended, a product bought after reading about it, a tablet prescribed years ago for something else. Each of those is a small experiment whose result the clinician would like to know, and the list is easier to reconstruct at home than under the lights.
What should you bring with you?
Bring the products themselves, not their names. Names on skincare packaging are marketing first and description second, and two products with almost identical branding can contain quite different things. A clinician holding the tube can read the ingredient list; a clinician hearing a brand name is guessing.
That applies to anything you have put on the affected skin recently, prescribed or otherwise: creams, ointments, cleansers, sunscreens, shampoos if the scalp is involved. It also applies to medicines you take by mouth, including ones that seem entirely unrelated to skin. Some are relevant in ways that would not be obvious from outside the profession, which is exactly why the question gets asked rather than assumed.
Photographs deserve a mention of their own. Conditions that flare and settle have an inconvenient habit of settling on the morning of the appointment, and a clinician cannot examine something that is no longer there by the time the appointment arrives. Pictures taken while it was visible, in daylight, with the date still attached in your phone’s gallery, restore a piece of the picture that would otherwise be lost. Take them as things happen rather than trying to reconstruct a record later.
What about make-up and skincare on the day?
Come with the area being examined clean and bare. Foundation, concealer, tinted moisturiser and fake tan all change colour, texture and how light behaves on the surface, and clinical lighting is unforgiving in a way that daylight is not. Removing all of it in the room is possible, but it uses time you would rather spend elsewhere, and wipes rarely take everything off.
Nail varnish comes off too if nails are part of why you are there. Nails carry a surprising amount of information and none of it is visible through two coats of colour. The same logic covers hair products when the scalp is the concern.
One thing not to change is your routine itself. There is a common instinct to arrive with skin looking its best, which quietly deletes the evidence: a patch that has calmed down under a cream tells a very different story from the same patch untreated, and the clinician wants the honest version. Unless the clinic has specifically asked you to pause something before a test, carry on as normal and mention what you did.
How do you make a short appointment go further?
Write your questions down. This sounds like the most obvious advice on this page and it is still the thing people most often skip, usually because the questions feel too clear to forget. They rarely survive the first few minutes of an appointment, when there is a lot to take in and a stranger is looking closely at your skin.
Three or four written questions, in the order that matters most to you, protect against that. Putting them in order is the important half: an appointment ends sooner than expected, and a list that saves the thing you really wanted to ask for last is a list that fails. If you want help with what to put on it, there is a whole page of them.
Ask whether you can write the answers down, or record them, and expect that to be fine. What gets said in a consultation is dense and unfamiliar, and half of it evaporates on the walk to the car park. Nobody minds a patient taking notes; several clinicians will slow down and repeat the terms if they see you writing.
Bring somebody with you if the appointment is likely to be difficult, or if you know you take things in better when there are two of you listening. That is not an imposition. It is a fairly common arrangement at any appointment and it works, because the person who is not being examined has considerably more attention available for what is being said.
What if the appointment covers your whole skin?
Some appointments involve looking at much more than the area that prompted them, and knowing that in advance makes it a great deal less awkward. Practical clothing helps: something easy to take off and put back on, and underwear you feel comfortable in. Leave anything complicated at home.
You can ask for a chaperone, and asking is routine rather than a statement about anybody. You can also say which areas you would rather not have examined, though it is worth hearing why the clinician wants to look before deciding. Neither of those requests will surprise anyone in the room.
The examination itself is covered in more detail on its own page, including what the magnifying instrument is for and why the clinician spends time on skin you had not thought about.
What should you do after you leave?
Read your notes while you still remember the shape of the conversation, ideally before you get home. Gaps show up quickly at that point, and a gap you find in the first hour is one you can still ask about; a gap you find in three weeks is one that waits for the next appointment.
Note the words you were given, even the ones you did not follow. Terms you cannot spell are worth writing phonetically and looking up afterwards, because a name is the thread that leads to everything else you might want to read. The glossary on this site exists for exactly that moment, and so do the condition pages.
Write down what was agreed, in your own words, along with anything that was left open. Skin conditions often move slowly enough that the next appointment is months away, by which time your record of what was said is more reliable than your memory of it. Ten minutes with a notebook, twice, is most of what good preparation amounts to.
Common questions
Should I take my make-up off before a dermatology appointment?
Yes, for any area being examined. Foundation, concealer and tinted moisturiser all change what skin looks like under clinical lighting, and removing them in the room wastes part of a short appointment. Come with the area clean and bare, and bring the products with you instead.
Are photographs on my phone useful to bring?
Often, yes. Skin that comes and goes has usually settled by the time an appointment arrives, and a dated photograph taken while something was visible shows the clinician what you would otherwise only be able to describe. Natural light and a steady close-up are enough.
Should I stop using my usual skincare beforehand?
Not without being asked to. Stopping something you have been using changes what the clinician sees and removes information from the consultation. If a particular product needs pausing before a specific test, the clinic will say so when they book you in.
How long does a first dermatology appointment usually last?
Shorter than most people expect, which is the whole reason preparation is worth the effort. Treat the time as limited and spend it on what only this clinician can do: looking at your skin, and answering the questions you brought with you.
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