Profile
Dr. Elizabeth Lester, a board-certified dermatologist and dermatopathologist, earned her Doctor of Medicine degree at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine in Iowa City, Iowa, and her B.A. in Linguistics from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Dr. Lester completed her transitional internship at Broadlawns Medical Center in Des Moines, Iowa, and her dermatology residency and dermatopathology fellowship at the University of Vermont Medical Center Division of Dermatology in Burlington.
“I really like the variety of dermatology and dermatopathology,” Dr. Lester says. “I like that I can be in the clinic caring for patients directly and also in the lab interpreting their skin specimens underneath the microscope.”
She says she also enjoys taking care of patients of all ages – from newborns to 100-year-olds “and everybody in between.”
Dr. Lester sees patients in the clinic for general medical and surgical dermatology. In addition, as a dermatopathologist she spends half of her time in the pathology lab interpreting skin specimens from biopsies and excisions.
“The main reason I was drawn to dermatology and dermatopathology is that you get to see the patient clinically with your own eyes, you take the specimen and then later that week you’re also looking at the specimen underneath the microscope,” she says. “I think knowing what the skin looked like in person, and knowing all of the details of the patient’s clinical background and how their condition had been treated to this point, really then informs my interpretation under the microscope.”
A mother of two young sons, Dr. Lester says that has helped inform the kind of care she provides, especially for children and families.
When she’s not working, she loves getting out to hike with her family and two dogs.