Jobs / Healthcare / 29-1213.00
Dermatologists
Diagnose and treat diseases relating to the skin, hair, and nails. May perform both medical and dermatological surgery functions.
- US jobs
- 11,370
- Median wage
- $328,730 a year
- Job family
- Healthcare
Can agents do the work of dermatologists?
We read the evidence at the level of the job family, Healthcare:
- Task levelPartialOne benchmark, from early 2025. On Stanford's MedAgentBench, where agents do clinical tasks in a simulated electronic health record, the best recorded model completes 69.7% of tasks (Claude 3.5 Sonnet v2). It has no maintained leaderboard, so newer models are not measured. No benchmark in our collection tests work with patients.
- Project levelPartialOnly adjacent evidence. GDPval includes nurses among its 44 occupations. OpenAI reports that GPT-5.5's deliverables won or tied against professionals' work in 84.9% of comparisons across all occupations. No benchmark in our collection tests clinical work over days, such as managing a patient's care.
Benchmarks for the job family
These cover work in healthcare, not always this occupation's tasks.
- 1846 EloClaude Opus 5.5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort, Default Fallback) · 23 Sep 2026Unrated
Typical tasks
From O*NET 31.0. Core tasks first. Few of these tasks have a benchmark today.
- Conduct complete skin examinations.
- Diagnose and treat pigmented lesions such as common acquired nevi, congenital nevi, dysplastic nevi, Spitz nevi, blue nevi, or melanoma.
- Perform incisional biopsies to diagnose melanoma.
- Perform skin surgery to improve appearance, make early diagnoses, or control diseases such as skin cancer.
- Counsel patients on topics such as the need for annual dermatologic screenings, sun protection, skin cancer awareness, or skin and lymph node self-examinations.
- Diagnose and treat skin conditions such as acne, dandruff, athlete's foot, moles, psoriasis, or skin cancer.
- Record patients' health histories.
- Recommend diagnostic tests based on patients' histories and physical examination findings.
- Prescribe hormonal agents or topical treatments such as contraceptives, spironolactone, antiandrogens, oral corticosteroids, retinoids, benzoyl peroxide, or antibiotics.
- Conduct or order diagnostic tests such as chest radiographs (x-rays), microbiologic tests, or endocrinologic tests.
- Read current literature, talk with colleagues, and participate in professional organizations or conferences to keep abreast of developments in dermatology.
- Provide dermatologic consultation to other health professionals.
Other job titles for this occupation (18)
Board Certified Dermatologist · Dermatologist MD (Dermatologist Medical Doctor) · Dermatologist Physician · Dermatopathologist · Doctor · MD (Medical Doctor) · Mohs Micrographic Surgeon · Mohs Surgeon · Pediatric Dermatologist · Practicing Dermatologist · Clinical Dermatologist · Dermatological Surgeon · Dermatologist · Dermatology Physician · DO Physician (Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine Physician) · General Dermatologist · Medical Dermatologist · Procedural Dermatologist