Skin: It’s our biggest organ – but UK dermatology care is in crisis

A chronic shortage of consultants and inadequate training of GPs have led to serious lapses in treatment for conditions that are painful, debilitating and psychologically damaging, reports Steve Boggan

(The Independent/iStock)

Jackie Adams was terrified. She had never had any problems with her skin and here she was, in her late forties, covered in angry, red, cracked, painful lesions… and they seemed set to cover her whole body. “I woke up one day with a patch on my leg that started itching,” she recalls. “Then it started going red and within a week it was under my arms and all the way down them, down my legs, across my belly, down my back. And everywhere it appeared, it felt like a burning pain.”

Jackie, a no-nonsense businesswoman running two butchers’ shops and a cafe in East Sussex, did what we would all do; she went to her GP. But she was greeted with puzzlement and the suggestion that “maybe” it was shingles.

“I was given some cream and told to come back in two weeks if it didn't go away, but after taking a look on the internet, even I could see it wasn’t shingles and it wasn’t going anywhere,” she says. “I felt the surgery really should have been more aware. I endured the two weeks but it felt like a terrible waste of time.”