From his clinic in Belgrano, where more than 20 doctors work and more than 30 thousand people are treated a year, Irene Bermejo reviews his beginnings in the profession. “I started my Medicine career when the fear of the ghost of the UBA passed away,” he recalls. When he finished secondary school at the age of 17, he began teaching in Kindergarten and in the last year he was encouraged to take the first steps in what would be his real vocation: dermatology. “I believe that one is acquiring passion as he knows, nobody can have passion for what he does not know,” he explains.
With more than 40 years of experience in dermatological medicine, along the way he also discovered new passions, teaching and aesthetics. In recent years, his work has multiplied. It has its own line of cosmetic products, to which it is now added a line of men’s creams. “My growth was thanks to word of mouth, that is still the most important thing, maybe social networks will give you visibility faster, but prestige is not built on networks“, Explain.
Is currently Member of the Argentine Society of Dermatology, the Argentine Medical Association, CILAD, and the American Academy Dermatology. He is also a full member and teacher at the Argentine Society of Laser and Medical Technology. It trains professionals both in Argentina and abroad on the handling of Israeli laser technology. In 1989 he received the award for the best work of the year on “Vasculitis by Hypergammaglobulinemia”. She is the beautician of choice for many celebrities such as Darío Barassi, Viviana Canosa, Romina Gaetani, Paula Colombini, Maia Chacra, among others.
News: What do you like most about your job?
Irene Bermejo: The creation. Dermatology seems so superficial, but the skin is the first organ to form, being so primitive, it is an organ to which many psychosomatic pathologies refer. I did not dedicate myself to psychiatry but I do use it a lot to understand what happens to the patient. The things that happen to the patient do not only have to do with the outside, they have a lot to do with the inside. That is one of the things that I am most passionate about about what I do. The aesthetic came later. I am 40 years of dermatologist and 28 with the clinic. Today anyone takes a course in aesthetics and appropriates the skin. However, the skin is an organ that reflects so many emotions that you will never be a better esthetician than when you are a dermatologist.
News: In the last time skin care became fashionable through the networks, what opinion do you have about that?
Russet: I think skin care came into vogue during the pandemic when people had no choice but to take care of themselves. What happens with fashion is that anyone believes that they can appropriate the skin and tell how it has to be cleaned and the reality is that many times it is a lot of verse, a lot of ignorance.
News: How is the psychological work you do with patients?
Russet: I try to look at the patient’s story, not the photo. The patient comes with a movie. Listen to the patient with a wider ear. Sometimes it does not matter what happens to us in life, but what we do with what happens to us, we must help the patient to transform it in their favor. As a dermatologist, you put a name and a surname to the manifestations.
News: Aesthetics is sometimes seen as frivolous, but you must see complicated stories …
Russet: There is always a side B that the patient does not count on. Do not stay alone on the surface, you cannot correct what it shows with what it hides. If you can put into words what you are hiding, you can figure it out.
Bermejo is the third daughter of a family with three siblings who grew up as only children because they had been with each other for several years. She says that her father was very demanding and her mother was very childish: “From a very young age my role was to take care of my mother,” she says. She also remembers that her father gave her mother a hairdresser, where she also used makeup and waxed and after starting the business, she left, leaving her mother with a depression. “There I said: ‘Irene, I opened the business because we don’t eat,’” he says. This is how she learned to cut her hair, make up, wax, and thanks to that business she was able to pay for a career in Medicine.
News: With all this demands, what happens when you get home?
Russet: I absolutely disconnect from work. I have three children by two husbands, I raised them alone. I always had help to be the provider for a family and three children who learned to have a working mother. Neither is a doctor. I passed on the passion for what I do, so that they have passion for what they like, and they did.
News: With the example of working women, do you feel represented by feminist movements?
Bermejo: It seems to me that accepting differences should not be a fight. We should be able to agree to change reality.
News: What are the most frequent inquiries?
Russet: I am someone who through time has specialized a lot in faces, I do not like to transform faces but to give them the shine and health that the skin should have. It has to do with how you present yourself to the world, but not just how you see yourself. People are more health conscious.
News: Do you serve a lot of celebrities?
Russet: Yes, many.
News: How do you accept or not treat a famous person?
Bermejo: I like serving real people. I don’t like to attend to the disconnected stereotype. I love generating links, famous or not famous. I love the people who come and commit to what we are going to do. I don’t like to feel like I’m wasting my time.
News: Do you apply your advice to your own routine?
Bermejo: I do the same thing that I ask my patients. I’m not obsessive, I just take care of myself, I try to eat healthy, but if I go out and want to eat a flan with cream, I eat it. Enjoying life helps reduce stress. Life is too short to deprive yourself of the pleasure of enjoying yourself. I do gimnastics. The years do not come alone. I take care of myself because one becomes the aspirational of the one who comes to see you. I would not be credible if I demanded things from the patient that I am not capable of doing.
News: Now that summer is coming, what do you recommend regarding sun and skin?
Russet: I am quite an atypical doctor. I believe that the sun is also a source of energy that converts vitamin D into a more soluble and available form for health. Vitamin D is part of immunity. Of course, when I expose myself I put on a protector and take care of the schedules. I like to enjoy the sun, the holidays and it seems to me that teaching people to enjoy themselves responsibly is allowing them to be happy and to take care of themselves. Prohibitions never seem to me to be successful.
