Slade Stratton, MD, grew up in rural Oklahoma in a medical family, with both is father and grandfather being pediatricians, and his mother teaching nursing. He was raised around doctors and patients and “couldn’t see myself doing anything else.” You might say he was born into medicine. Dr. Stratton pursued an undergraduate degree in engineering in 2005 and, still, he knew he would become a doctor. Dermatology later became his calling.
“There’s a great combination of long-term continuity with patients and outpatient surgery in dermatology,” states Stratton. As a surgical intern in the Navy, he discovered that being a hospital doctor wasn’t for him, yet his love for outpatient surgery and cutaneous procedures grew strong. The Navy, as he puts it, “provides a unique opportunity in medicine to delay answering the omnipresent question, ‘what do I want to be when I grow up?’ ”
Dr. Dan Duffy, now a nearly-retired internist, was a close friend and mentor of Dr. Stratton’s in medical school. “He helped me to appreciate the personal rewards and professional satisfaction that long-tem continuity with patients can bring.” Dr. Duffy, a national, professional medical educator, is also founder of American Academy on Healthcare Communications. Before choosing dermatology, Dr. Stratton had careful discussions with both Dr. Duffy and another friend, a practicing Mohs surgeon.
“The most challenging, and rewarding, part of dermatology practice,” Dr. Stratton says, “is navigating shared decision making with patients. Treatment and reconstructive decisions with skin cancers can be difficult for many patients to traverse and, in dermatology, there can be many options. I really think it’s important to help patients make informed decisions while framing risk/benefit analysis to a patient’s level of sophistication and values.”
Dr. Stratton enjoys long-distance trail running and fly fishing. He, his spouse, and three children live in St. Louis, where he practices dermatologic surgery at Epiphany Dermatology.
