My nursing career started in 1988 at the School of Nursing at Royal Liverpool Hospital. I was the only black person in my year group of more than 100 students. Over the intervening years, the proportion of nurses from the Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) community has grown to one in five, which more closely matches the community we serve.1 However, there is still an evident lack of knowledge when it comes to treating darker skin types, particularly in the aesthetic field.
During my initial training as a nurse, skin colour and the effect it can have on diagnosis and treatment was never mentioned. This omission has continued in most of my subsequent training as a midwife, health visitor and for the last 10 years in my role as an aesthetic nurse.
For example, I was taught that a person presenting with a myocardial infarction would display a number of physical symptoms, including changes to skin appearance, but these skin colour changes were…
