Empowering Primary Care Providers to Transform Pediatric Acne Care: A Quality Improvement Project

Pediatric primary care providers (PCPs) play a critical role in managing acne vulgaris, often serving as the first point of contact for afflicted patients. However, many PCPs lack the training and confidence necessary to initiate evidence-based first-line therapies, and furthermore face diagnostic challenges and sociocultural misconceptions. This quality improvement (QI) project aimed to address these barriers to treatment by developing and implementing an educational session for PCPs in a South Florida pediatric clinic. The session, grounded in the latest peer-reviewed literature and the 2024 American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) guidelines for the management of acne vulgaris, focused on enriching PCPs’ knowledge and confidence in initiating early treatments. Through diagnostic and therapeutic insights, the intervention empowered PCPs and clinical staff members to navigate acne management independently while patients awaited specialist care in a dermatology practice. Pre and post-session surveys demonstrated noteworthy improvement in provider confidence and an increased willingness to incorporate the 2024 guidelines into clinical practice. This QI project highlights the value of targeted educational interventions in closing the practice gap, caused by a nationwide shortage of pediatric dermatologists.