The tube that stayed in the cupboard

Colette Aumont had been prescribed a treatment she was frightened of by a clinician who had ten minutes and used them on the diagnosis.

Under-treatment driven by fear of a treatment is more common in this clinic than over-treatment, and the fear is usually acquired from well-meaning advice.

The steroid nobody explained

Photograph-based triage moved most urgent lesion referrals to an answer within a fortnight, and moved the queue for benign findings out of the way entirely.

Under-treatment from fear is far more common here than over-treatment. The fear is nearly always secondhand.

Dr. Ilse Marchand, dermatology

Treatment that gets used

Adherence to topical treatment is low almost everywhere and is a design problem rather than a character one: the regimens are long, greasy and unpleasant.

“I used it properly for the first time in year three,” she says. “It worked in nine days.”