Real Life Skin Care for the Healthcare Professional: Our Conversation with Joan
Perspective can change everything. This can even apply to the role skin care plays in your life.
We spoke with Joan, a managing director at one of the nation’s top healthcare consulting firms in Philadelphia, PA, but she didn’t start there. After completing her bachelor’s degree, Joan worked at Johns Hopkins taking care of premature infants.
“You weren’t considered on time until you had done a three-minute scrub with Betadine and a hard scrub brush up and down all you fingers, all over your palm, and up onto your wrist area. So it was pretty harsh and then you would rinse that off and you went in” She continued, “for every patient you wore gloves because they were so little and infections could happen easily.”
The washing and scrubbing took a toll on her skin but when we asked about her skin care habits to restore moisture to her skin, she said she wasn’t too worried about the effects back then.
“I remember using some hand lotion. I probably didn’t do too much [moisturising] to be honest, I don’t remember paying much attention to it all, so I think young women of today are much more knowledgeable about that.”
While Joan still works in hospitals, her job takes her across the country and she works on the other side of healthcare. But just as her career evolved, so did her skin care concerns.
“My biggest enemy now is the cold, so I’ve been waiting to see how amolee bar soap affects my legs and my hands. During the day it feels like there’s more moisture in my skin.”
We recently introduced her to amolee bar soap to see how it compared to what she used in the past. “When I change skin care products, I consider fragrance, cost, any benefit, what’s in it, because sometimes they seem like they all have the same thing in it, and I consider its value.”
Joan continued, “I’m using the Lemongrass bar but I can’t really smell it now. You can smell it during the shower, it’s lovely, very nice aroma to it, but I don’t smell it on me afterwards, that’s what I like. My hands still get dry, but I think it’s more of an aging thing. I still don’t use lotion but I like the amolee bar soap and I don’t think it’s as drying as what I was used to.”
As a young nurse, Joan experienced a lot of the same harsh, hand-cleansing practices nurses do today. While she might not have found it necessary to moisturize multiple times a day, today she does believe it’s important to use a straightforward, quality product for her skin. As a healthcare professional always on the go, she doesn’t have time to waste on anything less.
