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A dermatologist friend of mine trained in a virtually all-white area and then got a job in a place that wasn't. Apparently it was a significant adjustment caring for patients with darker skin.

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There's also a false belief, common among doctors and other medical professionals, that darker skin is thicker/tougher. (to be 100% clear, it only differs from lighter skin in pigment and no other characteristics).

Your comment and the one you replied to don't make sense to me. How can skin only differ in pigment, but it also require additional training to care for skin of different color?

Because it is a different colour, meaning that all the training you received learning focussed on different shades of pink no longer applies. Darker skin means the symptoms you are looking for are lower contrast and a different colour. It’s a simple case of repeating all that training against different skin colours.

It’s often difficult for someone trained exclusively with pale skin to recognise something as obvious as sunburn on darker skin, for example.

I'm guessing that identification of different skin conditions on skin of much higher pigmentation that what a dermatologist has been trained on is an obstacle.

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