Dr. Phillip McKee qualified in medicine in 1972 at Queen's University Belfast, Northern Ireland. This was followed by pathology training at the Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast, and Membership in the Royal College of Pathologists in 1978. He then completed a Dermatopathology Fellowship at St John's Hospital for Diseases of the Skin in London. He was appointed to the Faculty of St Thomas' Hospital Medical School in London in 1979 and subsequently to the Faculty of St John's Hospital for Diseases of the Skin in 1992. In 1989 he was made Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists and in 1992 was awarded his Doctorate in Medicine by Queen's University of Belfast In 1991.
In 1998, Dr McKee was recruited to Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston as Director of Dermatopathology and Associate Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School. He moved to Arizona in 2004 where he worked on several books including a book on cutaneous appendage tumors with Michal Michal and Dmitry Kazakov and an atlas with bulleted text entitled “High Yield Dermatopathology” co-authored with Nooshin Brinster, Vince Liu and Hafeez Diwan. He was editor of the 3rd edition of Pathology of the Skin which was awarded the first prize certificate in the Dermatology category in The Royal Society of Medicine and Society of Authors 2005 Annual Medical Book Competition and a first prize certificate in the Dermatology Category in the British Medical Association 2005 Annual Medical Book Competition. Dr McKee is author/co-author of 169 original articles and author or editor of 12 textbooks with 3 foreign language translations. Until his retirement in 2013, he was host of a teaching Dermatopathology website- DermpathPRO.
He was awarded the Elson B Helwig lecture award in 2003 and was made an honorary lifetime member of the American Society of Dermatopathology in 2009 and the British Society for Dermatopathology in 2010. He was awarded the Piet Grobler Memorial award in 2014. In addition, he was awarded The American Society of Dermatopathology’s Founders’ Award in 2019 to recognize his outstanding contributions to the field.
Dr. McKee’s hobby and passion in life, outside of dermatology, is Ferrari sports cars and high-speed driving. His wife Grace (once a full-time cytopathologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Associate Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School) is now a full-time, extremely accomplished, and successful artist.
Phillip McKee is a household name to trainees and seasoned professionals across the world and is recognized in the DHOF for his contributions to the field of dermatopathology.
