Before you get your dermal filler or anti wrinkle injections, do as much research as you can. Here’s a guide to help you choose the best cosmetic injectables clinic for you.
How long has the injector been injecting full time?
How long has the injector been at their current practice?
Stability is a beautiful thing in a medical service provider.
How long has their practice been established?
Again, this speaks to trustworthiness, stability and reputation.
How many injectable treatments do they perform per year?
A great answer would be in the many thousands.
What memberships do they hold, and for how long?
Is the injector dedicated to continuing medical education? Are they a fellow of CPCA or ACAM or ACCS?
Does the doctor perform any other type of medicine/surgery?
If so, this will affect how much cosmetic medicine and injectables they perform.
A surgeon performing injectables one day per week, would take a long time to become proficient in injecting.
The way to do this is to check the clinic website for before and after photos of their work on patients.
If the injector is perpetrating stock photos supplied by their injectable wholesaler, then these are completely unhelpful in helping you see if you share the doctor’s aesthetic.
Study their website with a critical eye.
Is it a good clinic if they are ranking front page on Google for injectable search terms like “dermal filler Sydney” or have a large Instagram following?
Not necessarily, being front page of google indicates that they are good at SEO, or pay a lot to someone who is good at SEO! Having a large legitimate following on Instagram means they are good at content creation or pay someone who is, or have advertised heavily.
This gives you such an idea about the clinic and their focus. Do they value you as a potential client. Are they interested in helping you and sharing information? Most staff at cosmetic clinics are there for a reason, which is that THEY LOVE THE SUBJECT, so they should be willing and able to share a lot of valuable information.
Do aesthetics matter? Are the staff overdone? Are the staff underdone? Is the clinic neat, clean, tidy and functional? Are there good systems in place? All of these clues will give you an idea about whether you are going to get the service at the level that you expect.
2. The occasional negative review should be expected. Attempted extortion exists using reviews in the cosmetic medical industry unfortunately.
Your hairdresser and beauty therapist are great places to start! They talk all day long about such things and have access to a large number of clients. This approach still has limitations, but these professionals can be a great resource.
In Australia, it is law that the patient must have a consultation with a doctor before that doctor prescribes the cosmetic injectables, which may then be injected by the doctor or a nurse. If the clinic does not provide a consultation with a doctor prior to your treatment by a nurse, DO NOT GO THROUGH WITH THE PROCEDURE, as they are breaking the law, and are therefore not covered by insurance. If they are breaking the law in this way, this is an obvious sign that you should be cautious with your trust.
Skype cosmetic consultations are poor medical practice, and onselling of S4 drugs is illegal in NSW. Onselling is where the prescribing doctor is not supervising the injector.
What happens with these skyping clinics is that the doctor may well have no experience in cosmetic medicine and may also be in another state. They are often paid between $25-$50 per Skype call. It is the Skyping doctors who are legally responsible for your treatment and all complications arising from it.
Also, if you are not being treated by a doctor and there is not one available at the clinic you went to, who will be caring for you when something goes wrong, which requires assessment and treatment by a doctor? If an infection occurs with your filler, or something worse, who do you want on site and accessible at all times? Clinics who don’t have doctors onsite are clearly an inferior choice.
Is the treatment at a GP clinic or a cosmetic clinic? If at a GP clinic or dentist, then this may mean that general practice, or dentistry, rather than cosmetic medicine is what the practitioner has experience in and spends more of their days on.
Has the clinic owner had other clinics which have gone bankrupt? Total red flag.
Is the owner deregistered, or have they been previously. This is never an ideal situation, and the details or the deregistration should be studied.
On the injector’s website, is there a mobile number or a landline. Clearly a clinic without a landline should raise some red flags.
Check the pricing. Be careful of the (lack of) aftercare, safety, trustworthiness of those clinics/injectors with too good to be true pricing. It is your face we are talking about here, look after it carefully.
If the nurse/doctor has testimonials on their website, this is illegal in Australia. Any illegal activity should raise a red flag.
If in the “about” section of a website they do not name their doctor, this is definitely a red flag. Who is the prescriber, there has to be one, why are they not named? The prescribing doctor is the person legally responsible for your treatment, you MUST be aware of their name, their experience and their history.
Call the clinic and ask which days and times the prescribing doctor is onsite at the clinic. This will give you a useful key to work out how the practice is being run, and if it is the type of practice with the acceptable level of service to you.
In the end it is the whole service including the results that matter, and you won’t know this until you go through with a treatment. For safety’s sake, feel free to start slow, so that the level of trust can build and so that the doctor can get to know you.
Educate yourself about cosmetic treatments if you are interested, get as much information as you find useful. If you’re more of an image person rather than copy, look up google images e.g. before and after images for procedures that you’re considering. Look up online what can go wrong with procedures that you’re having.
As your cosmetic doctors, we are trying to create an image out of your words, sometimes this can be difficult. This is where images are so useful. Images of photos you don’t like of yourself, images of old photos of yourself when you were happiest with your appearance.. Images of the size and shape of lips/nose/cheeks you like. These things can be really helpful to improving communication and results.
Listen to your doctor. Often a patient will be fixated on an area, that just doesn’t have a high satisfaction rate when treated, the doctor will explain this and offer great alternatives for making the patient more beautiful, but the patient cannot move on from the difficult area. Your doctor, if experienced, is trying to talk you out of certain procedures for a reason.
How to choose a good cosmetic injector. Is your doctor a Fellow of the CPCA or ACAM?