In 2001, Frank Perri, a psychologist and statistician, then in his twenties, was handed a unit called Graduating Seminar in a brand-new Victoria University (VU) course, teaching the country’s first cohort of what would become dermal clinicians. There was no textbook or profession to point at. There was also a warning. The coordinator told him this class of experienced beauty therapists had made previous teachers cry.
“I had long hair back then. I think I had a nose ring, and a lollipop in my mouth,” he remembers. “I looked ridiculous, but the idea was to shock them a little before they jumped to a conclusion about this statistician who was going to teach them stats.”
His answer was a class exercise: build a professional association from nothing: standards, ethics, and a name. “Through lots and lots of discussions throughout that semester, they came up with this pretend association, if you like,” he says. “When that unit finished, and the course finished, they registered it and made it real.”
Claire Simpson was one of the students in that room. She had spent a decade as a beauty therapist when a letter invited her to an information session about a new course, born of a need first raised by Melbourne plastic surgeon Dr Bryan Mendelson.
“There were all these new devices, all these non-surgical treatments, and they simply did not have any staff that were trained in that,” she says. The era’s saying captured what the surgeons were after: the knowledge of a nurse and the bedside manner of a beauty therapist. The beauty therapists won.
What followed was less fate and more hard work. “It was a blank canvas then,” she says of the 14-person cohort, all seasoned practitioners with strong opinions. “But we gave it a red-hot go.” Nothing sparked more debate than what to call themselves. “Everyone had strong opinions,” she remembers. “We got bogged down on what things would be called.” The name they chose, dermal clinician, endured. “Considering that was a term no one had ever heard of before, it is quite an achievement.”
When the course wrapped mid-year, the entire cohort went away together for a long weekend. The association they had drafted between classes became the Australian Society of Dermal Clinicians (ASDC).
Today, dermal clinicians hold professional identifiers with Services Australia, appear in national clinical terminology, integrate with My Health Record, and register as NDIS and aged care providers. Infrastructure rarely makes headlines. It only looks small until you remember this began as homework.
This September, the ASDC marks 25 years the way it began: in a room, working out what comes next. The room in question is SkinCon, the Society’s annual education event running September 11–13 in Melbourne. Under this year’s theme, Foundations to Frontiers, dermal clinicians and therapists, alongside dermatology nurses, cosmetic nurses, beauty therapists, general practitioners, and students, will explore collaborative care models, research updates, skin across the lifespan, and sustainable business practices before a hands-on clinical exploration day at VU. The same institution where the homework was set.
Then there is the Saturday night: a 25th Anniversary Gala that brings the profession back into one room to toast the milestone.
One detail the founding cohort might enjoy: every speaker on SkinCon 26’s program is a woman. Nobody engineered it. The lineup assembled itself from the work being done. In a profession drafted into existence by a room full of women, it reads less like a statement and more like continuity.
Claire Simpson, who went in restless, never needed to search again. “It’s always been changing. It’s always been something exciting, something new that’s happening,” she says. “I’ve never been looking for something beyond this.”
Frank Perri, who still lectures, is asked what surprises him about how far it has come. Not much, it turns out. “Not surprised, really, but more proud,” he says. As for what comes next: “More research coming from the field, and especially coming from dermal clinicians themselves.”
What he’s proudest of, though, might be how little the profession needs him now.
“I liken it to when you’re growing a tree. You kind of need to protect it in those early stages, because it’s fragile and it’s growing. But once it gets big enough, and now it’s big enough, it certainly doesn’t need me or anybody else to defend it.”
Twenty-five years on, the tree holds its own.
The SkinCon 26 program and 25th anniversary gala tickets are available at dermalclinicians.com.au/skincon26
Additional Details:
The Australian Society of Dermal CliniciansSKINCON26 – Foundations to Frontiers11-13 September, 2026VenuesFriday/Saturday The Rydges Hotel – 186 Exhibition Street MelbourneSunday – Victoria University – 370 Little Lonsdale StreetThe Program
This two-day interactive conference focuses on skin health and highlights advancements in research, techniques, and technologies for evidence-based skin management.
