Skin colour and disease diagnosis: A cross‐sectional study of medical students in Kuwait

Abstract

Skin colour and disease diagnosis: A cross-sectional study of medical students in KuwaitDear Editor, Dermatologic and systemic diseases show variation in their presentation on different skin colours; as a result, identification, diagnosis, and treatment of these diseases is proving to be challenging. 1 Moreover, existing evidence shows inadequate representation of different dermatological manifestations in skin of colour (SoC) in the resources commonly used in medical training programs and by medical personnel. 2,3 A previous study assessing the diversity of images used in preclinical anatomy textbooks found that light skin colour images comprised 74.5% of the total images, medium skin colour images comprised 21%, while dark skin colour images comprised 4.5%. 4 Another study showed that only 14.9% of 1123 images in medical students' resources were classified as SoC. 5 This underrepresentation of SoC is also seen in dermatology journals. 6 Due to this underrepresentation, it is expected that the ability and confidence of medical students to make a valid diagnosis across different skin colours may be compromised, as evidenced by prior studies conducted in the United States 7,8 and Canada. 9 Given the lack of such assessments in Middle Eastern settings where the populations are ethnically diverse, we sought to assess the ability of medical students at Kuwait University to visually identify dermatological manifestations in SoC and light skin as well as to determine students' self-rated confidence in their visual diagnostic abilities.The target study sample included students in the preclinical program (2nd to 4th year) and clinical program (5th to 7th year) at Kuwait University, College of Medicine. The curriculum of the pre-clinical years is organ-system based that focuses on building the theoretical aspects of medical practice, including pathology, pharmacology, biochemistry, clinical medicine, and other related fields, with some bedside hospital teaching. During the clinical years, students undergo training in dermatology in year six of their studies. Hence, the exposure of students to conditions with dermatological manifestations is cumulative, with aThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.