Imagine having unlicensed toxins injected into your face by someone with no training. That's what is happening across the UK every day - with disastrous results. Nurse Practitioner Sarah Healey and Ashton Collins from campaign group Save Face join me to discuss the alarming lack of regulation in the booming non-surgical aesthetics industry.
Hear how unscrupulous beauticians are buying unlicensed products from overseas and injecting unwitting consumers with saline, beef gelatine and other products.
Sarah, who's been shortlisted for a Safety In Beauty Award, gives us a first-hand account of the process she follows when dealing with patients seeking injectable treatments and the risks they pose. We also discuss how social media and reality TV have played their role in escalating the demand amongst the young, and why it's more important than ever to ensure you're in the hands of a suitably trained and certified practitioner. So, tune in, as we end with a discussion around the current standards in aesthetic treatments and how to ensure your safety in this rapidly growing industry.
In loving memory of my friend Sarah, who died suddenly on 6th November 2023, and who always believed in doing the right thing.
https://www.angelawalkerreports.com/
Imagine having unlicensed toxins injected into your face by someone with no training. That's what is happening across the UK every day - with disastrous results. Nurse Practitioner Sarah Healey and Ashton Collins from campaign group Save Face join me to discuss the alarming lack of regulation in the booming non-surgical aesthetics industry.
Hear how unscrupulous beauticians are buying unlicensed products from overseas and injecting unwitting consumers with saline, beef gelatine and other products.
Sarah, who's been shortlisted for a Safety In Beauty Award, gives us a first-hand account of the process she follows when dealing with patients seeking injectable treatments and the risks they pose. We also discuss how social media and reality TV have played their role in escalating the demand amongst the young, and why it's more important than ever to ensure you're in the hands of a suitably trained and certified practitioner. So, tune in, as we end with a discussion around the current standards in aesthetic treatments and how to ensure your safety in this rapidly growing industry.
In loving memory of my friend Sarah, who died suddenly on 6th November 2023, and who always believed in doing the right thing.
https://www.angelawalkerreports.com/
Thousands of people in the UK are having toxins injected into their faces by unqualified, unlicensed practitioners in the name of beauty. The number of people having non-surgical aesthetic cosmetic procedures has exploded. That's in the words of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Beauty, aesthetics and Well-Being. But government regulation has not kept pace, leaving people vulnerable to botched treatments and complications as serious as blindness and anaphylaxis. And there are concerns that young people with body image problems are having treatments without being psychologically assessed. I'm Janice Angela Walker and in my podcast I interview inspirational people and discuss under-reported issues. Today I'm in conversation with Sarah Healy, a nurse of 24 years who now runs Sarah Healy Aesthetics and will also be hearing from Save Face, the government-approved register of aesthetic practitioners. Sarah, thanks for joining me. Thank you for having me. Now you're a qualified nurse and you've set up your own practice. Tell me about your background and qualifications.
Sarah Healy:I qualified as a nurse in 2004, working in accident and emergency and then moving on to oncology In 2019,. having dabbled in a little bit of aesthetics myself, I decided to branch out and take on an aesthetic role. I didn't go into it lightly. You can practice in aesthetics having just done a day course in this country. However, I went and did a level seven, which is a master's certificate in aesthetics, which is currently the highest qualification you can have to practice in medical aesthetics.
Angela Walker:Now I know that you've got concerns about safety and the fact that people don't need to be as highly qualified as yourself to go about practicing in aesthetics. What are your concerns about people who aren't as qualified as you doing these injections and so?
Sarah Healy:forth. My major concerns are how unqualified practitioners will deal with medical complications associated with aesthetic procedures. Generally, when aesthetics are carried out, aesthetic treatments are carried out by medical professionals. They're not without risk, but the risk is minimized. Things like infection control and other complications are minimized when you go to a medical practitioner. However, when people aren't medically qualified, the risks are then heightened. You tend to see more risks associated and more complications associated with treatments. I then wonder how the complications are treated by non-medical practitioners, as lots of the remedies for complications tend to be prescription only.
Angela Walker:So if somebody comes to you and says I'd like some Botox, i'd like some fillers, what's the procedure? Do you jump straight in and just start injecting? What process do you go through?
Sarah Healy:Absolutely not. So I always invite anyone that's considering any injectable treatment to come in for a face-to-face consultation. That's quite a nice way to get to know each other, get to know what expectations of treatment are The patient can. Then we can talk about the risks associated with such treatments. We can establish whether the expectation level what if the patient believes the treatments are going to give them the aesthetic result they want. So we talk about limitations of treatment as well, because we've got to remember these are non-surgical procedures. They're not necessarily facelifts. So some people might want lots and lots of different things that are treated and their expectation levels are up here when actually we're looking at somewhere. You know they are still non-surgical treatments.
Sarah Healy:So we manage patient expectations. We then talk about I always say less is more. So we talk about how to dip if they are considering injectables, dipping their toe in the water and what would be the best way to do that. We also look at contraindications to treatment. So if a patient has, if there's a reason why they can't have such treatments, we look at their medical history. We establish what would be the most appropriate way. Sometimes it's not always injectable treatment, sometimes it can be just a really, really good skincare regime. So we always start with a foundation and look at building up on that.
Angela Walker:And you mentioned side effects. Yeah, they're not all catastrophic. I mean there are. what kind of side effects can people expect if they have these injectables?
Sarah Healy:So risks vary. more commonly, if you're having injectable treatment, common risks are injection associated risks. So a little bit of bleeding, a little bit of bruising, swelling, and then we get into more serious side effects, which can be infection and unwanted aesthetic outcome. So if an injectable is placed into the wrong area, we can have an undesirable outcome with regards to toxin treatments. If we're looking at dermal filler, we can have more serious complications with regard to vascular occlusion, which is when a product is placed into a vessel and that becomes a medical emergency and it needs to be dissolved. It's incredibly rare, however. it does happen and it is a medical emergency. So vascular occlusion leads it on to things like blindless and stroke in extremely severe cases if left untreated.
Angela Walker:Now I've been doing a lot of research into this because I knew we were going to have this chat and I know that you've got concerns about regulation safety. You only have to pop onto Facebook and do a little Google for Botox, injectables and this kind of thing And you come up with lots of people on Facebook and other social media who are mobile, who come to your house, give you some Botox, give you some fillers. What is the regulation regarding being qualified and being allowed to do that?
Sarah Healy:There are no regulations. So I always say that the UK is actually the wild west of the aesthetics industry. When you're a medical professional, we do have a code of conduct to adhere to, so we do have to buy licensed products from licensed pharmacies. So, generally, our products are safe. They're tested, they're CE marked, they're FDA approved. However, when you are a non-medical professional, you don't have to answer to a code of conduct, so you're not bound by these rules that medics are. People can purchase what they want from wherever they want and injects Joe public. Basically, just because something's not licensed in the UK doesn't mean that you can't get your hands on it. I regularly get Instagram inboxes from all kinds of filler supply people trying to sell me unlicensed toxin from around the world.
Angela Walker:And we'll talk about that a bit more in a minute, and we're going to talk to a lady from an organisation called Save Face, but before we do I just want to mention this. I've got here three official reports. This one is the Ugly Side of Beauty Improving the Safety of Cosmetic Treatments in England. This is by the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health and they're calling for better regulation and a licensing scheme for England. This one is from the House of Commons Health and Social Care Committee. It's called The Impact of Body Image on Mental and Physical Health. This is a report from last year. The recommendations in this report were asking for better regulation to be implemented by this month, by July. That hasn't happened. And there's another report here from the All Party Parliamentary Group on Beauty, Aesthetics and Well-being. This is another one about botulinum toxins and other injectables and calling for more regulation. It looks like the government knows there's an issue but they haven't done anything about it. I quite agree.
Sarah Healy:They do know there's an issue, i do worry It's an issue that's been going on a long, long time and it's become quite embedded in the way that we practice in the UK. I think it will take a long time to undo those issues. I think really they do need to act now And, like Safeface have suggested, non-medical practitioners should be working under someone who can prescribe, a medical professional who can prescribe and who can protect people who are embarking on injectable treatments.
Angela Walker:Earlier aspect to Ashton Collins from Safeface. She set that organisation up because she wanted to have some treatment herself and she couldn't find a way of finding a registered safe practitioner to do that and that worried her. Let's have a listen to what she has to say.
Ashton Collins:So I established Safeface in 2014, and basically what happened was I was looking for a treatment provider.
Ashton Collins:I was considering having lip fillers, and at the time I was working in compliance and accreditation for like health and safety and occupational health, so I knew a lot about independent assessment and verification and all those sorts of models.
Ashton Collins:But as I was doing my research for the amount of practitioners I was finding I was also confronting with just as many horror stories, botched news articles and different things like that, and so I was doing more and more research, and I stumbled across a government commissioned report at the time, which was commissioned on the back of the breast implant PIP breast implant scandal, and I think that report, for the first time, really did expose just how unregulated non-surgical cosmetic procedures are and just how unprotected the people that consume them are if things go wrong, and so that sort of sparked a desire in me to take what I'd known about assessment, verification, accreditation and apply it to a sector that was in dire need of it.
Ashton Collins:So I set up a business plan and engaged with key stakeholders and to make sure that the standards were fit for purpose and that our model was ticked all the boxes in terms of the checks that we do on behalf of the consumer, and so that's when it started, and then in 2016, we became government approved, so we're now accredited and overseen by the same body that oversees the statutory regulatory registers in the UK. So your doctors, your nurses and things like that And what we do is essentially is we take all the burden and guesswork away from the member of the public as possible, so we check everything on their behalf to make sure that they're in the safest possible hands, that that person uses safe products and operates from a safe clinical setting.
Angela Walker:What are the risks associated with having one of these non-surgical cosmetic treatments by somebody who hasn't got a medical qualification?
Ashton Collins:Yeah, and that's for us where the concern comes in is that these treatments in and of themselves are not necessarily high risk.
Ashton Collins:although they can cause quite serious complications, those complications are minimized when in the hands of healthcare professionals, so they can range from things like infections, lumps and sightly outcomes right through to one the other end of the spectrum tissue loss and blindness. And it's really important that, for example, botox is a prescription only medicine, so only healthcare professionals and only a certain number of healthcare professionals are able to prescribe within aesthetics. and a lot of people don't know that and they have no expectation that when they go to their local beauty therapists or Botox that they ought to be seen by a prescriber before they can be prescribed the drug. And dermal fillers although they're not prescription only devices, they actually can cause far more serious complications than Botox. So, like I said, the tissue death, the blindness and anything that happens as a complication of dermal filler treatments requires prescription only treatments to remedy that. So it's really important that you are in the hands of a trained healthcare professional because if something did go wrong, they're best equipped to look after you.
Angela Walker:In one of the government reports. It describes the increase in people having these treatments as an explosion, and so many more people are going for it now, and a lot of them are quite young people, under the age of 30 even. Why do you think that we're seeing this and what do you feel about that as an organisation?
Ashton Collins:Yeah, i mean, you know these treatments really are quite ubiquitous now and I think you know, when you cast your mind back to when these treatments first came to the UK, sort of 15, 20 years ago, they were very much reserved for the rich, the famous, and they were mostly, you know, being consumed by middle-aged women who wanted to look a little bit younger, a little bit fresher. But now, because of the advent of social media, reality TV, they're being presented to a much younger audience and people like Kylie Jenner and all of the sort of Love Island contestants are creating an appetite amongst these very young girls. and that is concerning because obviously you know a lot of these girls don't need these treatments at all, but also because they are most at risk of falling in unsafe hands, because they don't appreciate that they're medical interventions and therefore they have no expectation around the person doing the treatments. They are not necessarily cash rich, so they're looking for bargains and they turn to social media to find cheap deals, time-limited offers, and they are the sort of high-risk things that lead you into getting perhaps into unscrupulous hands. And actually, you know we are the only organisation in the UK that gathers patient-reported data on complaints. So in the nearly 10 years that we've been operating, we've helped over 15,000 members of the public who have suffered. you know complications and wanted outcomes, adverse reactions, and you know quite consistently nearly 50% of those people are under 30.
Ashton Collins:And the problem with practitioners that operate in that way is that they operate pretty much like ghosts. So you know you stumble across a page and it's got a spurious name, for example, amy's Aesthetics. Amy is mobile. She comes to your house to do the treatment. You only have her Instagram contact and perhaps a mobile phone number for her, and so she comes along. she doesn't tell you about any possible side effects. you know the treatment is over and done within five minutes and she's out the door.
Ashton Collins:And then you start to notice perhaps things not quite right. You might be in a lot of pain, discomfort, swelling, and the more you reach out to Amy, you know she fobs you off and then eventually she cuts communication with you completely. You don't know her full name, you've got no address for her, you don't know if she's insured, you don't know what product she's used. There's no medical records. So that makes it tricky when it comes to seeking any redress, but also when it comes to trying to find somebody else to do some corrective treatment, because that person is then reluctant to take you on as a patient because they have no idea what Amy's injected and where. So these are the sort of you know consequences that happen a lot when people look to social media to find a practitioner.
Angela Walker:It's so easy to find someone on social media. You only have to take a quick look on Facebook, because I've been doing that in my research for this podcast and there's so many people who are willing to come to your house and give you these treatments. There are also a lot of support groups on Facebook for people who feel that they've had botched treatments. Yeah, what do you think the government should be doing about it?
Ashton Collins:Well, for us I mean the government has been aware of these problems for well over a decade and you know, in that time things have gotten worse because the treatments have become more popular and, as a direct consequence of that, more and more people have emerged as practitioners without any training, without any qualifications. And so it really is at a point now where you know there is an unknown quantity of people providing an unknown quantity of treatments. And obviously that's a risk because even if you were to introduce regulation, you have no means of tying these people to any fixed address. You don't know how to find them. They often, you know, if they operate on social media, as soon as they have a couple of complaints they'll shut that page down and pop up somewhere else. And you, you know, you don't know who they are, and so you know it is in a very difficult point now where you know, if you were to regulate, how you would capture these people within any sort of scheme.
Ashton Collins:But for us I mean, we're always, you know, of the mindset we only accredited health care professionals and only a certain number of those. So we only register doctors, nurses, dentists and prescribing pharmacists, and they that's because they can all prescribe and practice within aesthetics as part of their regulatory framework. And you know, these treatments, demonstrably, are safer in the hands of health care professionals because in that time that we've been gathering the patient reported data 80, over 80% of the treatment of the complaints that we get are related to treatments carried out by non health care professionals. So your beauticians, your lay people, your hairdressers, so the data speaks for itself. So we would really like there to be some restrictions on who can and can't do these treatments And if the government are not willing to do that, then to put in place a framework where they have to be overseen and supervised by a registered health care professional, because you know that that is needed.
Angela Walker:My understanding is that VAT is not always payable on these treatments. Can you tell me about that? Because obviously, if the government's taking VAT, the government's benefiting financially from the fact that there is a lack of regulation in the industry.
Ashton Collins:Yeah, i think they will be certainly benefiting from people. you know registered businesses who are eligible to become fat registered. They'll be benefiting from it, and you know these treatments because they're elective and they're not for medical indications necessarily. they're classified, as you know beauty enhancements And therefore you know they are. they're VAT payable. The issue that the government have, though, with that, you know, for as much money as they will be generating through legitimate businesses, they're also losing out on a considerable amount of people that operate under the radar that should perhaps be paying tax and VAT on these treatments that aren't How do people find out who has got some suitable qualifications?
Ashton Collins:This is the thing. So you know, often you'll find in, you know, press and media articles that people are told to do their research. Well, you know that's easier said than done. You know the average persons looking for these treatments don't know what qualifications these people should hold, what level of training they should have, what products they ought to be using and what sort of clinical setting they should be operating in.
Ashton Collins:Which is why we set up the register, because even if you knew what questions to ask, if you're sat in front of somebody quite unscrupulous and you say to them have you been trained, are you insured, do you have all these things in place? They'll say yes, because they want your money, your business. So you know, we've investigated cases where people have been masquerading as plastic surgeons when they haven't done a day's training in their lives. They've been buying fake products from China, and you know people have had anaphylactic reactions and have had permanent damage to their face because of these illegitimate products. And so you know there is no way of being able to verify things yourself, which is why the you know, safe face is so important.
Angela Walker:Yeah, tell me about these illegal products that people are managing to get their hands on, because Botox itself is that prescription only, you said, But of course that's just a brand name, isn't it? So talk me through the availability of these kind of products, how people are getting hold of them.
Ashton Collins:Yeah. So I mean I'll tell you the problem first in terms of you know why these non-housecare professionals are turned into this route. So if you were a beauty therapist, for example, and you wanted to offer Botox to your patients, then you would have to. It would be within a legal framework. You'd have to engage with a registered healthcare professional who's competent to prescribe, and every time you have a new client you have to have a valid prescription. So that prescriber has to do a face-to-face consultation with every person that you're going to be treating, to do an assessment to see whether they're suitable and to ascertain what dosage that they would require. Now, obviously that's logistically challenging for somebody to do that every time you have a new patient And also it's quite costly. So prescribers will charge around £30 to £50 per prescription And then you add on the cost of the product and it sort of makes you sort of quite uncompetitive that you have to do that.
Ashton Collins:And so what is happening increasingly is that people are cutting that out completely and buying botulinum toxin common-name Botox over the internet and importing it from China. And obviously the risk with that is that it could be nothing. It could be completely harmless saline solution that isn't going to deliver you any benefits but also isn't going to present you with a great deal of risk. Or, in the cases that we've seen, it could be beef gelatin. You know that the product that it was seized in the investigation that we worked on contained no traces of botulinum toxin. It was beef gelatin and it caused, you know, up to 20 women to have severe anaphylactic reactions, and so that's the other thing to be mindful of is you know the legitimacy and the efficacy of the products that people are using. You know, especially when you see alarmingly cheap prices, if you see a £99 Botox offer, the chances are that person isn't using licensed products.
Angela Walker:So, just to recap, what you're telling me is that unscrupulous people are buying on the internet Botox type products from China and injecting these into people's faces.
Ashton Collins:Yeah, and we've seen horrible consequences where, you know people have been injected with these fake products.
Ashton Collins:You know women who have had, you know, massive lumps appear at each injection site with Botox. You know you'd have about 10 to 15 injections across your forehead, more if you were having it around your eyes, you know, in the lower half of your face, and these lumps are sort of pustules that continue to keep refilling and bursting. They're causing people terrible crater-like scars. We've had a woman who's you know had necrosis from it and had to have surgery on half of her face because the infection has become so bad that she's now left with, you know, scars that are so deep where half of her face has been, you know, quite literally surgically removed as a result of these products. And that's the you know. That's what we try to do in terms of educating the public is that you know they wouldn't necessarily think that anybody would be unscrupulous enough to take a gamble like that with your health and your appearance. But the primary aim for these people is financial gain and they will do anything to make as much profit as possible.
Angela Walker:Absolutely shocking. There were some government recommendations from the all parliamentary group on beauty and health and they were calling for action to take place in July. by July this year That's not happened. Tell me a bit about that.
Ashton Collins:Yeah, and I mean you know, i think that in itself was quite an irresponsible call to action, because you know, especially from people who work within the Legislature framework and will understand, the amount of work that would go into developing a scheme that would be fit for purpose and robust enough to actually make any tangible difference. It's so unrealistic to expect that that would have been mobilized in less than a year, and so you know what that did is, you know, create this expectation within the press and the public that this issue is going to be sorted by next month, and of course that's never going to happen. You know these things can take years to implement and get right, and so you know it's unrealistic to even think that it would be by next July or the July after It's. you know there is a massive piece of work.
Angela Walker:Now tell me what is your message to government. Be specific here. What exactly would safe face like to see?
Ashton Collins:We would like to see a you know a regulatory framework that is robust enough to capture all these ghost-like operators and to put in place a you know if they're not going to restrict who can and can't do that and I understand why they wouldn't want to, because you know, like you said, they don't want to, you know, curtail people's right to make a living and do these treatments safely. But it is imperative that they put in place a supervision matrix in terms of if you are a non-healthcare professional operating in this space, you have to work under the direct supervision of a registered health care professional who can prescribe, because that is essential for managing complications.
Angela Walker:And if there's anyone listening who's thinking about having some of these treatments and let's be honest, you know, if people want these treatments, there's nothing wrong with going out and having these treatments. It's about getting it done safely. So we're not judging here on if people should have non-surgical treatments or procedures or whatever. If that's what people want to do, absolutely that, we're not criticising that at all. So if somebody's listening and they are thinking, yeah, you know, i want to, i want to have some treatments, what's your message to them?
Ashton Collins:Look, these treatments are fantastic in safe hands. They can make you feel more confident, you know they can make you look younger, fresher. Whatever it is that you were wanting to achieve, you know that they are fantastic. It's just for us is the safety message if you are considering a cosmetic intervention, you know, take every precaution necessary, check safe face, find a practitioner in your area that you know is past a really rigorous assessment process, that you'll be in a safe pair of hands.
Angela Walker:So Ashton mentioned some really worrying things there. One of them was, as you touched on earlier, people importing unlicensed products, which she says sometimes they could be saline, they could be beef gelatin. I mean, how easy is it for people to get hold of this stuff then?
Sarah Healy:Hearing that actually chilled me to the bone. I think it is quite easy for people to get those products. I think you only have to go on to Instagram and register yourself as so-and-so aesthetics and you'll have people in boxing you with these products. It's quite easy to get your hands on unlicensed products, which is the huge worry. I think that's, personally, where the government need to put their energy into first is getting these unlicensed products off the street, so to speak, because that's how I feel it is.
Angela Walker:One of the other things that Ashton mentioned was any increasing numbers of really young people people who are under 30, who are having injectables in their faces, and that number of young people doing that has grown exponentially. Why do you think that's happening? It's access.
Sarah Healy:So with the rise of social media, certainly, and certain TV programs, i think it's created a standard for young people to adhere to, not necessarily a positive one either. It's a certain expectation that certain women under 30, women and men under 30, tend to think that this is a look, a desirable look. So I think social media, instagram and definitely some of the TV shows have certainly propelled that sort of market forward with that.
Angela Walker:Do you think there should be some kind of signage saying this image has been digitally enhanced. This has been photoshopped, you know so that people know that that's not actually how somebody looks.
Sarah Healy:Yes, the expectation absolutely. And also I think there should be more policing of certain aesthetic practitioners selling packages with celebrity names associated with them, because I just think that gives a really, really well, one, it's not ethical, but two, it's not just not achievable either. What?
Angela Walker:do you mean so someone can go in and go? oh, i'd like the Kylie Jenner please.
Sarah Healy:Absolutely. There's certain packages. You can get a Kylie package in some places. You can get a Kim package in some places. Now, aesthetics is all about enhancing. Personally, i think aesthetics is all about enhancing your own natural beauty and not trying to look like somebody else.
Angela Walker:Let's be clear we don't want to demonise these treatments and there are plenty of practitioners who carry them out really safely and people are really happy with the results. I mean, obviously you do it for a living, so you feel very positive about them.
Sarah Healy:tell me about it, absolutely generally if they are done safely, if they are done with proper tested, tried tested, fda approved Z-mark products generally, the outcome can be really really nice, depending on what the patient desires. What I would say to people is I'd always invite them to ask their aesthetic practitioner and preferably a medical practitioner who they're insured with, who they're registered with ask to see their. You can ask to see someone's insurance. You can check them out on the NMC website so someone could check my registration. You can check out a doctor's on the GMC. You can check out a practitioner to ensure you are embarking on them from a safer aspect.
Angela Walker:It sounds to me like younger people might be quite vulnerable to these kind of cowboy practitioners because they might not have as much spare cash. They're aspiring to all these kind of like social media images and so on, and they're popping out to get their hair done and get their lips done at the same time. Do you think that we maybe need some kind of public education or information campaign to tell people that they should be checking for these things, because perhaps they don't realise that what they're going for is actually a medical procedure?
Sarah Healy:Yes, and also it's some of these even to a medical professional to buy. They're not cheap, they're not cheap projects. So if something is alarmingly cheap, generally there's something we all know that pay, you know, pay cheap, pay twice. We all know that if something is worryingly cheap, then generally it's not licensed, it's not safe, it's not. You know, the person injecting it probably doesn't have the skills, the skillset. Things are priced in aesthetics with regards to the injector's skill and also the injectors, the products that they're using. So if something is cheap, generally it's not. You know, it's not going to be good for you. There is, i mean you pay for the skill and not the mill is what they say in aesthetics so it feels like this is kind of like an industry that's developing quickly.
Angela Walker:It's growing really fast. Are you finding that there are like new procedures coming out and things like that?
Sarah Healy:Absolutely, and it's very important to keep yourself updated. As medics, as injectors, we have to keep ourselves updated with all the latest techniques, the latest products and also any changes to any sort of safety and complication management as well. So it's very important that you don't just people aren't just going and having a day course and then just carrying on injecting and becoming a little bit stagnant in their practice. You have to keep up to date. It changes every day, but that's the same in medicine. So the medical profession changes constantly and you're having to keep yourself up to date. So, as medical professionals, we're quite used to that. We're quite used to having to. We have a responsibility to keep ourselves up to date with the latest practice.
Angela Walker:Of course, if you're, you know a layperson who started branching out from doing nails and hair and now you're doing injectables, they might not have this awareness. Also, especially if they're using unlicensed products. They might not know if there's a problem with that batch or something.
Sarah Healy:No, absolutely if they're not, if they're not kept up to date, if they don't have a duty of care to keep themselves up to date, then how safe is that? is their practice.
Angela Walker:So what exactly would you like to see put in place to protect consumers, then?
Sarah Healy:Personally, i don't think med and non-medics should be injecting at all. Whether that will ever be enforced or put in place by the government, i don't know. I'd like to see a register where every every aesthetic injector has to register on and there has to be a standardized care care of the public throughout. So everyone has to meet a certain criteria. I believe all injectors should be at level seven. It should be at a level seven level. It shouldn't be able to embark on a day course and then go out and inject the following day. I do think that you should. Everyone should meet a sort of standardized criteria before injecting.
Angela Walker:So let's be clear at the moment, I could go out and do a one-day course and then I could start injecting toxins into people's faces Tomorrow. Yeah, you can absolutely do that. That's quite a thought. That's a quite thought. And what's level seven that you mentioned there? just expand that.
Sarah Healy:So the level seven was created. It's a master's level, certificate or diploma in aesthetics. It was created to standardize practice. Not only is it a practical, but you. There's a lot of theory around it as well, which is really good, because it enables the practitioner to think outside the box, enables you to consider all aspects of the patient you have to touch on. You have to delve into medical complications, you have to look at this, you have to look at the layers of the skin even you know so a lot of anatomy, a lot of physiology, a lot of pharmacology of the injectable that you're placing in patients. So it's very, very in-depth. It's something that can't possibly be taught on a one-day talk course. It took me around 12 months.
Angela Walker:And let's just talk about body image for a bit, because you know we've talked about the pressures on social media. How do you assess when someone comes to you, they might be a young person, who you know, who might not need any of the, they might not have wrinkles, they might not need any of these treatments or they might have, you know, a body image problems. You know, how can you psychologically assess if somebody should have a treatment like that?
Sarah Healy:It is a very, very difficult thing to assess, really on one meeting it is I get all my. There's lots of different assessment tools you can use to assess a patient's psychological body image and to assess whether they have body dysmorphic disorder. I get all my patients to fill out an assessment tool before they arrive. That being said, it's not just the assessment tool I use. I use years of nursing experience to assess a patient. Something doesn't sit right with me. I wouldn't inject. 20 years of nursing. That underpinning knowledge gives you in. It's kind of things that are ingrained into you from the off, so and it gives you your nursing intuition as well. There's other things that we do as well, so it goes nursing assessment, medical assessment, medical consultation there's lots of things that would make that would allow me to make a medical decision on whether this patient is right to have the injections.
Angela Walker:And what's your message to government today?
Sarah Healy:Personally, it's gone on long enough. I think they do need to act sooner. They need to take it seriously. They're aware of the issue, as we know. I think they need to work with organisations like Save Face and like the JCCP the Joint Council of Cosmetic Practitioners and listen to what these regulatory bodies are asking, and I think the government need to follow their lead really with regards to how they're registering practitioners and enforce it and back these companies up.
Angela Walker:Sarah Healy thanks so much for joining me.
Sarah Healy:Thank you for having me thanks.
Angela Walker:I'm Angela Walker and today I've been in conversation with Sarah Healy of Sarah Healy Aesthetics and Ashton Collins from the group Save Face. I hope you've enjoyed the programme. for more information, check out my website, wwwashtonclipscom. please do get in touch if there's someone inspirational you think that I should have on the show and if there are any under reported issues that I should be looking at. Until next time, take care.