Tiffany Walker

About me

I’m a primary care Physician Assistant with a special interest in dermatology, skin cancer medicine and medical aesthetics. I read skin for a living.

About my process

I strongly believe the skin is a window. It is one of the only organs where a disease process can be seen in plain sight, and it reflects what is happening in the rest of the body more often than people realise. It can show signs of thyroid disease, diabetes, liver and kidney conditions, autoimmune diseases, nutritional deficiencies, and sometimes something more serious like cancer. Most skin changes, however, are ordinary — the expected changes that come with living and ageing. Learning to tell one from the other is what I’ve spent the last decade doing.

Medical aesthetics, done properly, belongs to the same work. Our bodies take damage — from illness, from surgery, from the sun, from pollution, and from the business of just having lived your life.

I’ve treated scars that people had long accepted they would live with forever. I’ve treated asymmetry left behind by nerve injury and skin that stayed angry for years after the acne itself was long gone. I am careful and clear with my patients that injectables and skin treatments do not cure anything. However, if they are used well, and with restraint, it can give back something that was lost.

About my education

I graduated from the University of Manitoba Faculty of Medicine’s Master of Physician Assistant Studies in 2016, and received the Capstone Award for my thesis. I was the first Physician Assistant to practise medical aesthetics in Western Canada, and have been practising since 2016 in primary care, and since 2019 in medical aesthetics and primary care dermatology.

I haven’t stopped training since — certificates in dermoscopy, trichoscopy and onychoscopy through Cardiff University, a Professional Diploma in General Dermatology through HealthCert, a skin cancer medicine accelerator program, and most recently a rheumatology program for advanced practice providers through rhAPP.

My work holds a split focus: part-time primary care with the WRHA, weighted toward front-line dermatology, and a part-time private practice in medical aesthetics.

About what brought me here

Before medicine, I completed a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Manitoba with a focus on costume design, having turned down a place in McMaster University’s highly competitive Fine Arts program to do it. While finishing my undergrad I also dabbled in makeup artistry, working on a few indie films in Winnipeg. That background is not a footnote — reading proportion, light and structure on a face is a huge part of aesthetic medicine. This practice is medicine, but it is also art. The medicine tells me what is safe; my eye tells me what is right for that particular patient.

About my commitment to teaching

I am a clinical educator. I hold a Clinical Skills Trainer and Preceptor appointment with the University of Manitoba’s Department of Family Medicine, where I train and lecture medical students, residents and physician assistant students. I’m also on faculty with The Botox Course, teaching physicians, physician assistants, dentists, nurses and nurse practitioners the fundamentals of medical aesthetics.

I strongly believe the strongest providers are the ones who can teach others what they know. Because I teach this work, I have to be able to defend every choice I make in it.

About where I practise

I practise medical aesthetics at LifeSmart, a licensed medical clinic, in accordance with College of Physicians and Surgeons of Manitoba requirements. Aesthetic medicine is medicine, and I strongly believe it belongs in a medical setting.