In the Life Of: Dr Stefanie Williams

Dermatologist and clinic owner Dr Stefanie Williams discusses her working day and the development of her new skincare range

A day at the clinic… On a clinic morning, I would wake up at 7am and do a quick sun salutation or yoga exercise in front of the open window. I will eat breakfast with my husband and two of my children (the third one is at university in Leeds) before they head off to school. I get ready for work and aim to leave the house between 8-8.30am to catch the train to Vauxhall in London, where my clinic Eudelo Dermatology & Skin Wellbeing is located. I usually arrive at the clinic around 9:30am. Before we start seeing patients, my team will have a daily huddle where we congregate to discuss our plans for the day. This allows everyone to understand if there is anything important to know or be aware of throughout the working day. As we have around 25 staff members, it is also a good opportunity to see who is working that day. Throughout a typical clinic day, I’m usually back-to-back seeing patients until the evening. Every day is different, with a variety of medical and cosmetic patients to see, which makes every day varied and exciting. All my patients are booked into the same diary, so I don’t have specific slots which are reserved for a certain type of medical or aesthetic enquiry. I never work alone, and I always have an assistant in the room with me throughout the day. In the clinic, there might be another dermatologist or doctor in, so we often exchange knowledge and medical experiences. For example, recently I had a complex pregnant medical patient come to see me, so I consulted with another member of the dermatology team to get a second opinion. We naturally needed to be sure that the treatment we are recommending is safe for the baby as well as for the mother. I usually arrive home around 8pm and may spend some time on my art as I’m currently completing a part-time master’s degree in Fine Art. It is a two-year course and I’ve already finished one year. I feel that the Fine Art degree also helps with my aesthetic work, as it adds a different level of keeping the eye trained to perceive. My new skincare range… As well as completing my master’s, I have been developing my own skincare range Delo Rx for the past two years, which is so exciting! I created the range from scratch, together with a cosmetic chemist, as I’m incredibly specific in what I want. It has taken a long time to develop as it is aimed at a problematic target audience. It is an advanced antiageing range, but with the products specifically tailored to be suitable for adult women with breakout prone skin, including adult acne, rosacea and periorificial dermatitis. It’s a niche product range that resonates with my expertise as a dermatologist with special interest in acne and rosacea. We are developing seven products in total, making it a ‘capsule wardrobe’ of skincare which will be available in cosmetic clinics and very selected retailers. The range contains everything our patients’ skin really needs with regards to antiageing and maintenance. That’s particularly important for breakout prone skin, as one of the key problems with this skin type is that you don’t want to overload the skin with products, as this can lead to clogged pores and more breakouts as a result. All products are very lightweight in base formulation and not only low in oils, but also silicone derivatives, which is a huge formulator challenge. The range will include a cleanser, an innovative retinoid, a lightweight anti-inflammatory moisturiser, an antioxidant serum, SPF, anti-pigmentation serum and an eye cream. The products will be released in intervals with the first product, the Delo Rx Hybrid Cleanser out now. I started with the cleanser as this is arguably the most important step in a skincare routine for breakout prone skin! The Delo Rx Hybrid Cleanser contains the highest level of active ingredients on the market. It clears pores thoroughly, while at the same time being suitable even for very sensitive skin.

Most memorable day in my career… The most memorable moment I can think of to date was back in spring 2020 after the first COVID-19 lockdown in the UK. After a few months of the clinic being closed, me and my team were finally ready to reopen again; we were all very excited. However, on the Sunday evening, before the Monday reopening was scheduled to happen, myself and my husband Jay went into the clinic for a final check to ensure everything was ready. But we arrived at a flooded clinic! It was the most heart-sinking feeling ever, and I cried in frustration. Together, the two of us, a cleaning team and Thames Water (who arrived at 2am!) managed to get the clinic dry and disinfected overnight – hours of work, sweat and tears later – we finally were able to open the clinic the next day after all. It was a very memorable moment, albeit not in a good way!

Favourite aspect of my job… Seeing my patient’s skin improve makes my job so rewarding.

My hobbies include… As well as fine art, I really enjoy meditation and I’ve started a nineweek online breathwork workshop.

Career if you weren’t a dermatologist… Cosmetic chemist! I’ve loved developing my skincare over the past two years and have found it such an interesting project. Before this, I would have said a midwife.

The Last Word

With climate change and sustainability becoming a vital topic, Dr Heather Muir outlines how clinics can become more environmentally friendly

As the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 26) commences, taking place between October 31 and November 12, I have been reflecting on what I am contributing to the Earth’s health. 78% of the earth’s surface is covered in water and as a result, a majority of our plastic ends up in the ocean with plastics consistently making up 80% of all marine debris studied,1 polluting and destroying our ecosystem. Everything we use has an environmental impact on the climate. Sustainability consulting firm Zero Waste reported that 120 billion units of packaging is produced by the global cosmetics industry annually and a majority of this is not recyclable. However, of the recyclable packaging less than a third of all plastic in the UK is recycled2 and worse still, it is shocking how much of what we believe to be recyclable is not ― just ask the oceans! In 2016, a study estimated that 12 million metric tons of plastic was dumped in the ocean every year.3 Plastic production is forecast to grow by 60% by 2030 and to treble by 2050.4 Were you aware that it takes almost 1,000 years for the average plastic pot of moisturiser to decompose? On reflection, at home, I am very environmentally aware ensuring we recycle where possible, purchase as minimal single use plastic and years ago, I made the decision to drive an electric car. I encourage my daughter to be aware of the planet and the effect of our actions on it, yet at work I unfortunately do very little at present. We have no environmental or recycling protocols and the only obvious effort we make is to recycle our cardboard boxes.

The above statistics show it’s important that my clinics, as well as the rest of the aesthetics industry, make a conscious effort to change and aid environmental issues.

How clinics impact climate change Climate change and the environment is increasingly becoming a pivotal topic in the cosmetics industry, with companies transferring towards greener packaging and incorporating environmentally friendly ingredients in their products. The ban on microbeads in beauty and personal care items was a positive step and this is driven by both the industry and green consumerism.5 At present, I can see less of this movement in the medical aesthetics specialty. So, what is the impact of the aesthetics industry on the planet? In medicine we cannot change the number of single use products that we wield but we could recycle the paper, plastic and cardboard packaging. What can we do as a clinic? This is even more important now with the increase in demand on our clinics with the recent COVID-19 pandemic and the need for additional personal protective equipment (PPE) and cleaning products.

Simple steps to becoming environmentally friendly I believe the first step in becoming more environmentally friendly in your clinic is to analyse the areas where we can make impactful changes. Mobile apps such as Klima can be used to assist with this process, as it can help us to track our carbon footprint and learn how to reduce our impact. The easiest step to begin with is recycling. Clinics will have many cardboard boxes containing deliveries, and paper packaging for our consumables. In my clinic we have a clinical waste and general waste bin in the clinical rooms, but I plan to add an additional recycling bin in order to encourage the recycling of day-to-day packaging. However, it is not as simple as placing packaging into a recycle bin as this may not result in the items being recycled. Programmes, such as TerraCycle or Return to Origins, offer free recycling for all beauty product packaging. Apps such as Horizon can also be used to scan product barcodes and learn how to recycle them in your area. This requires little effort with no increased costs and in my opinion, the resulting improvements are worth the extra dedication. I plan to ensure that the bags we use for cosmeceutical purchases will be recyclable, reusable and not contain plastic, so that these are easily recyclable for our patients after use and can cut down the amount of waste that our clinic contributes to. In addition, I’m implementing a new protocol in my clinic that all staff will have reusable non-plastic water bottles, and there should ideally be no single use plastic bottles in clinic at all. For sparkling water, I would advise that clinics purchase a machine which will produce carbonated water rather than buying bottles. We have world class running water, so why buy bottles at all! Cleaning supplies, where possible, should be changed to environmentally friendlier chemicals that have more sustainable packaging such as fatty acids C8-18, denatured alcohol and lactic acid. Many manufacturers also now have refillable containers reducing plastic waste and there are more eco-friendly chemical products available for the general clinic cleaning. Clinics can also reduce the temperature of the washing machine and dishwasher to reduce the amount of energy we use. As a bonus this reduces costs too. Educating staff and encouraging them to save water by working as a team and communicating about when we need to use and save energy is also integral. Clinics should also start analysing electricity and gas suppliers to investigate if there are more environmentally friendly suppliers available, such as OVO energy, and at what cost. Governments have targets as to the production of renewable energy, so we can push ourselves towards the consumption of natural power.

Get started! I believe we all have a responsibility to do our part to protect the environment. If we start to become more aware of our environmental impact, we can create a positive movement towards a greener future for both the industry and the planet. We can be leaders in a world where so many people look to us for solutions. We can set a wonderful example to our patients and our colleagues to make as much effort to preserve our planet as we do in preserving ourselves and our patients.

Dr Heather Muir qualified as a dentist from Glasgow University in 1998 and went on to complete a master’s degree in non-surgical facial aesthetics at the University of Central Lancashire in 2013. Dr Muir is now lead clinical practitioner and director of Your Face Aesthetics. Qual: BDS, MSc

REFERENCES

1. Eunomia, 2016, <www.eunomia.co.uk> 2. Plastics Europe, 2020, <www.plasticseurope.org> 3. IUCN, 2020, <www.iucn.org> 4. Center for International Environmental Law, 2019, <www.ciel. org> 5. Shannon Kilgariff, Microbeads in Aesthetics, 2016, <https:// aestheticsjournal.com/feature/microbeads-in-aesthetics>