Sky’s the Limit for Attacks on Aesthetics Industry
Just a couple of weeks ago I was forced to write a blog telling the industry not to panic after a BBC report about a non-medic botching a treatment.
And now Sky are at it!!
And I say again: “Don’t Panic”.
Sky News went with the headline: “Fillers, false advertising and intimidation: The ugly side of the aesthetic training industry.”
Sky News says its reporter “uncovered rampant substandard training in the industry, putting patients at risk and leaving students short of thousands of pounds”.
I have written to reporter Victoria Elms asking if she’d be interested in hearing the other side of the story, what good training looks like but haven’t heard back yet so I suppose it’s not news when things are going well, and training is great.
Victoria focused on adverts on social media for short courses promising big earnings after you qualify.
And yes, we’ve all seen loads of them.
And while she does acknowledge that there are many reputable providers, she focuses on some who are falling well below “recommended standards”.
The report contains worrying examples of people leaving with certificates for things they haven’t trained on, or students injecting within 30 minutes of arriving and promising to go from complete novice to qualified trainer in under a week.
What doesn’t surprise me is the number of new training establishments over the past couple of years.
The industry is booming and is now worth about £3.5 BILLION a year.
And this wasn’t just about non-medics for a change.
One shocking example was of a trainer marketing themselves as “a Harley Street doctor” who accepted a student with no qualifications and began injecting almost as son as she had arrived – with overflowing needle bins and “mess everywhere”.
The JCCP claims it has received up to 20 complaints each week for the past couple of years about bad training practices.
And the investigation also focused on the role of social media advertising as a major problem.
Calls for regulation of training academies are growing and I’m all for that because I know how good Cosmetic Couture’s standards are.
We have even created the L3 Matrix training programme to help standardise training – and this initial training takes eight weeks – not just two days.
So, let’s get our act together and identify the cowboys and run them out of town.
Let’s set the standards like Cosmetic Couture have been doing for the past 10 years.
Let’s train practitioners to be safe and professional and I agree with The JCCP that all courses should include:
Anatomy and physiology of the face – we do
Infection Control and Disease Standards – we do
Injection techniques – of course
Products, including sourcing – agreed
Complications management – we were the first to do this in detail!!
I said it two weeks ago and I’ll say it again that we should focus on the best training especially with regards to adverse effects and first aid, the best procedures and in the best clinical environment to make sure clients are given the best possible care.
There will always be bad apples in our industry and both the BBC Investigation called “Under The Skin, The Botched Beauty Business” and the new Sky investigation highlight some dodgy practices.
My message is simple – Don’t panic – get professional!!
I will keep on asking the TV stations to let me on and defend our industry when these cases come up – and who else is doing that?
There are so many training providers now that some of them are going to be rubbish – and train bad practitioners. This is where I agree with the JCCP – let’s stamp them out and get nationally recognised training standards for both medics and non-medics.
