Caroline A. Nelson, MD

Caroline Nelson, MD is a medical dermatologist at the Yale School of Medicine. She treats patients at Yale New Haven Hospital and at the Yale Medicine Dermatology New Haven and Branford clinics.

“As a medical student, what inspired me to go into dermatology was seeing the negative impact of skin diseases on quality of life. I wanted to make a difference, particularly for critically ill patients,” she says. Following her dermatology residency at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Nelson completed a fellowship in complex medical dermatology at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute of Harvard Medical School.

At Yale, Dr. Nelson attends on the consult service and focuses her clinical and research activities on autoimmune blistering, granulomatous, and neutrophilic skin disorders. These include pemphigus, pemphigoid, sarcoidosis, Sweet syndrome, and pyoderma gangrenosum. She has expertise in treating patients with paraneoplastic syndromes and skin side effects of cancer therapies. In her outpatient clinics, Dr. Nelson also performs routine skin cancer screenings and treats patients with a variety of skin problems, such as acne.

Dr. Nelson is passionate about medical education. She teaches the inpatient dermatology curriculum at Yale and is writing and illustrating a review book to prepare residents for the American Board of Dermatology in-training and certification examinations. “Teaching is not simply about communicating facts,” she says, “it is about demonstrating how the doctor-patient relationship can improve the lives of patients with skin diseases.” An emerging area of interest for Dr. Nelson is exploring how dermatologists can work synergistically with cutting-edge technologies to improve patient care while preserving the human doctor-patient relationship.