Don't Choose a Plastic Surgeon Until You Listen to This! (Ep. 97)

Thinking about plastic surgery? Don’t pick a surgeon until you’ve heard this. In this solo episode of The Trillium Show, board-certified plastic surgeon Dr. Jason Hall pulls back the curtain on the cosmetic industry’s marketing hype to give you an honest, practical roadmap for selecting the right surgeon for you.

You’ll learn:

• How to tell if a “cosmetic surgeon” is actually trained in surgery
• Why hospital privileges matter more than flashy social media
• What to watch for in before-and-after photos and online reviews
• How pricing, personality, and complications factor into your decision

Dr. Hall even shares a free downloadable checklist you can take to consultations to help you make a confident, informed choice.

Get the download here: https://drjasonhall.mykajabi.com/surgeonchecklist

Transcript

Dr. Jason Hall: 0:36

If you're thinking about having plastic surgery, do not choose a surgeon until you listen to this. If you spend any time on Instagram or social media in general, and you have even a passing interest in plastic surgery, chances are you've seen every plastic surgeon in your town, and then plastic surgeons in other towns pop up in your in your social media feed. There is a ton of marketing in the cosmetic space, in the plastic surgery space, and it makes it if you don't know somebody, it makes it really difficult to choose a plastic surgeon in this episode of the Trillium show, what I'm going to do is break down things to look for. Break down things to look out for, and help you kind of make the best decision you can when it comes to how to select a plastic surgeon. So welcome to the Trillium Show. I'm your host. Dr Jason Hall, board certified plastic surgeon, author of the new book, The Art of aging. You can see here, you can click the link in the show notes, go to Amazon, get a copy shipped to you today. So plastic surgery, medicine in general, used to be one of these things that people kind of talked about, but nobody advertised in the 90s. All of that changed, and you started seeing billboards. You started seeing plastic surgeons on TV. And now plastic surgery advertising is absolutely everywhere, magazines, internet, social media, and that makes it really hard for people who are trying to find the best plastic surgeon for whatever procedure it is that they're interested in, makes it really difficult to identify who that person is. Everybody has something on their website or on their social media about how they're the best and you know, how do you cut through the noise? So what we're going to do today is we're going to talk about things to look out for and talk about things to look at, to not to watch for when you're looking for a plastic surgeon, I think the first thing is look in the mirror. The most important thing, the way to get the best result, is to understand your own goals. What are you looking to accomplish? And are you looking to accomplish this for you, or are you looking to accomplish this for someone else? You'd be surprised the number of people who come in to see plastic surgeons who are there because someone else has pointed out a feature that they think needs to be changed or a flaw that they see that they say, Hey, you know, it's like somebody telling you that you look better as a blonde than a brunette. If that's not your choice, you're never going to be pleased with the result, because, unlike color in your hair, once you have plastic surgery, you can't go back. And so before you even go down that road, I think it's really important to take a look in the mirror, assess the reasons why you're doing this, and make sure that you're doing this because it's something that you want to do, not something that somebody else thinks would be good for you. That's kind of an aside. The credentialing thing is one of the big aspects of choosing a plastic surgeon that can be really difficult. You know, in the intro, I talk about being board certified, but I didn't tell you what board it was. So my board certification is the American Board of Plastic Surgery. That is the board that certifies plastic surgeons in the United States, you can't call yourself a plastic surgeon legally without being board certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery. I think even backing up a step, you need to make sure that your surgeon, your cosmetic surgeon, plastic surgeon, whatever you want to call it, is actually a surgeon. Because in the United States, you can do surgery without actually having any training whatsoever in surgery. If you look at my diploma from medical school, if you look at my medical license from Tennessee, Texas, South Carolina, places that I've been licensed and are licensed now, it says that I have a license to practice medicine and surgery. Your family practitioner, his or her license, says the exact same thing. So you have to be really careful that your cosmetic surgeon is actually a surgeon first, and that means that they went through a surgical residency program. There are four, what we call core specialties in cosmetic surgery. Those four specialties are plastic surgery, facial plastic surgery, so those, those are ear, nose and throat and. Surgeons who have done additional training in cosmetic surgery of the face, oculoplastic surgeons, which are ophthalmologists, so eye surgeons who've done a full residency in ophthalmology, so long word eye surgery, and then did additional training in cosmetic surgery of mostly forehead and eyes and then dermatology, and they kind of specialize in all things skin. None of them get any surgical training, so they are the only one of the four cosmetic core cosmetic specialists that are not trained in surgery, so they don't operate, but they do skin stuff and non surgical treatment and lasers. So those are the only four core cosmetic specialties. You'll see all sorts of other specialists that are getting into the cosmetic business because it's lucrative. Just in our area, you've got oral surgeons who are who are dentists that went on to oral and maxillofacial surgical training. You see emergency room doctors, you see family practitioners, you see obstetricians. And all of these different specialists are getting into the cosmetic field because it's a lucrative field, and that's not to denigrate any one of them, but you have to, you have to know that going into this, because you know what most of the non surgical specialists do are kind of med spa things, injectables, lasers, you know, non invasive body sculpting, Things like that. But if you see one of these other specialists who are offering cosmetic surgical procedures, you kind of need to scratch your head. That was a kind of a really quick overview of the credentialing behind it. The shortcut to know if you your potential surgeon, your surgical candidate. Surgeon, candidate is an actual trained surgeon, is to ask them if they have hospital privileges to perform the procedure that you want or that you're interested in, because a surgeon who is adequately trained, who is licensed to do the things that you're interested in is going to have to have hospital privileges to be able to do those things. If they don't, then, you know, they're, they're probably shouldn't be doing those treatments. Nobody publicizes that you have to ask. You have to, you know, call their office and ask if they have hospital credentials to do these things, even those of us you know, I do 99% of my surgery in an outpatient surgery center, I still have to have hospital privileges to be able to do those same procedures in local hospitals around here, because if, God forbid, we have a complication that requires me to go to the hospital and take care of a patient. It has to be a procedure that I can do so that I can fix the problem, otherwise you're left to kind of, whoever's on call for the hospital taking care of you in the middle of the night or on a weekend, and that's not something that anybody wants to do. So that's a that's kind of a quick overview on the credentialing process behind choosing a plastic surgeon. Second thing in that we kind of talked a lot about this at the beginning, is the social media aspect of it, and I will go on record, I'm not shy about saying when social media came out, I was not a big fan, still not a huge fan, of social media, but I do see the utility. You're probably watching this on social media right now, if you're not listening to it in your car, on the on a podcast, social media is kind of a double edged sword. There's a lot of marketing hype behind it. You've got to know that going into it, but it is a great way for you to kind of interview your potential surgeon, by seeing who they are on social media before you go in the office, you get a feel for their personality. You also get a feel for their results and for what they think looks good, because if you're following a surgeon's social media accounts, and you see a bunch of people who look kind of weird and crazy, whether that's their office staff, whether that's them, whether that's the the before and after photos that go up on their on their social feed, you know kind of what they think looks good, and if you don't like what They think looks good, or you don't like their personality on social media, chances are probably not going to be a good fit for you. So you can use social media, really, as a kind of interview from your couch of your potential surgeon, or surgeons photos are another thing that's that's really. Important to look at. We touched on this just a minute ago. If you see a bunch of photos from your surgeon and you don't like the way they look, you know, say you're interested in a breast augmentation or a rhinoplasty, and you know, the surgeon's noses are really pointy and sharp and Angular, and you're not looking for that look. You probably ought to look for somebody whose results are more like what you're looking for. There is a lot of deception that goes on, whether it's either over intended or kind of unintended. And just looking for social media content that you have to look at when you are evaluating surgeons, before and after pictures you see, you will see a lot on the internet of patients before pictures, which are taken in a very sterile office setting, with the lights that are, that are, you know, like we are here in the studio, kind of all focused. There's no shadows. Patients are without makeup. Their hair is pulled back. They don't necessarily look super flattering in the before pictures, and then their after photos are some kind of selfie that they've taken in their car when they're in a full face of makeup, getting ready to go out for the evening in jewelry and in a nice blouse, you can't really make an apples to apples comparison there. You really need to have standardized photos to be able to adequately compare a good before and after the selfie in the car that's taken sent in as the after photo. Maybe a great picture, but you don't know what that person looks like under those same sterile lights in the office. So that's one of those tricks that we, you know, in this field, will use, usually unintentionally, to try and show off our work. So make sure that the lighting the poses are standard. The other thing that you have to look for, even in office photos, is, again, lighting. Because if you're looking and this is really more for facial pictures than it is for breast and body photos, is if the lighting is different in those pictures, you know, one picture is taken in the in the before, under just standard fluorescent lights, where you've got a lot of shadows, it puts shadows under people's eyes, put shadows under their nose and chin, and makes them look kind of tired and haggard, and then their after photo is in front of studio lighting that doesn't have any shadows. You can make the same person look like almost two different people just by changing the lighting. So make sure. Pay attention to the shadows under the eyes. Pay attention to the to the lighting in the pictures to make sure that you're again getting that apples to apples, comparison of your before and after pictures. Another thing to look at when you're evaluating a surgeon is reviews. And this is one of those things that you know, if there was deception in the before and after pictures. There is, there is almost intentional deception in reviews from the very beginning when reviews online, reviews started happening. This has been an area that has been scammed almost from the very beginning. My brother, for a little while, worked in internet marketing and was doing some work for not a plastic surgeon in another town, and was talking about all of the different ways that fake reviews were generated for competitors of his company, and how he was so frustrated that, you know, people were getting paid to create fake accounts, to write fake reviews. And, you know, fortunately, with this was pre Google. Google has been really good about cracking down on a lot of that, but a lot of the review sites that aren't the Googles, that aren't the Facebooks that aren't like a company that that we use called real patient ratings, and I'll talk about them in just a second. Are really paid marketing sites. You're not paying for them, but the surgeon who's generating the reviews is there are a couple of very well known review sites, Yelp that are really bad about almost extorting practices to highlight their reviews. If you pay to be kind of a preferred provider on some of these review sites, and they will intentionally, you know, boost your reviews and throttle back your competitors who aren't paying for those services. And so, you know, sites like real self, which is a plastic surgery rating site, again, Yelp, does this? You have to be careful about who shows up there and who doesn't. The best review sites are review sites that allow anybody to review them, but they have to be a verified user, so Google being a good one, but with with a lot of these, you have no idea whether the person who's writing the review is actually even a patient of the practice. That's why we we use a company out of California called real patient ratings, who only uses reviews from verified patients in the practice and post those reviews anonymously, unless the patient allows them their name to be used and is a is a really good source of good information about what happens within a Practice. There are certain things to look for with reviews that I think are you really need to focus on, namely, patient results and patients experience. You know, people will write reviews about practices. You know, they had to wait too long in the waiting room the the receptionist was having about having a bad day. You know, the nurse had, you know, food on her, on her shirt from lunch. I mean, little things that, while they're marginally important, don't really tell you about the experience and the results that patients are getting in surgery, but affect their reviews nonetheless. So as you're looking at reviews, pay attention to the good ones. Also look at the bad ones. Look at the look at the low star, the one star. Reviews in and read what people are writing. Is it written in intelligible English? You know, that's, that's a, that's a big tip off. You know, if you run on sentences, no periods, you know, sounds like a drunken rant, it might just be a drunken rant, but read those for content, and let that help inform your decision. So reviews are important, but they shouldn't be the deciding factor in a decision on who to choose the best plastic who to choose plastic surgeon for you. We can't talk about cosmetic surgery without talking about price and I am, and always have been, a big proponent for price transparency. You can look at my website, call my office, and you can get somebody to give you a ballpark estimate of what a certain procedure or combination of procedures will cost before you even come in the door. In a perfect world, cost and price wouldn't matter. We don't, obviously don't live in a perfect world, and it does matter. And so you know you have to be you know if you're looking for cosmetic surgery, it has to be something that is financially feasible for you. And so knowing a price before you even walk in the office, before you even schedule that consultation, is important. There are options available out there for patients who say, Well, you know, I really want this. I could probably make it work. There are financing options out there. There's Care Credit. There's a company called Cherry, which is, which is another one, a patient phi. There's all sorts of places where you can go and you can actually get pre approved for how much ever your procedure costs again before you even walk in the door. And kind of last thing I'll say about price is that no two surgeons are the same. You are paying for an outcome, you're also paying for an experience. You're paying for attention, you're paying for caring. You're paying for someone who is going to take care of you no matter what happens. And that is something that I think kind of leads us to, you know, the last part about this is complications. No discussion of plastic surgery is really complete without talking about possible complications. Again, in an ideal world, complications in cosmetic surgery and elective surgery that you don't need, that you want, wouldn't happen, but they do. Do, and you have to be okay with the fact that you may be one of the unlucky patients that has a complication from surgery, and you want somebody who's going to be there with you to help make it right, because it sucks for you. It also sucks for your surgeon. You know, nobody wants to have complications, but we we do, and we deal with them. And you want to make sure that that person is going to stick with you and have a real discussion with you about those complications before they happen, so that you at least if something does happen, you know that they're in it with you, and you know that it's something that everybody's trying to avoid on the front end. In wrapping this up, I think choosing a cosmetic surgeon is a plastic surgeon is a very personal decision. You know, who's the person who's exactly right for your friend who got a great result may not be the right person for you, for personality, reasons, for Office reasons, for any number of the things that we talked about. And so do your research, do your homework, and you know, use what we've talked about today as kind of a guide on how to choose the best person for you. And I put together a kind of a checklist that has all of this stuff in it. You feel free to to email. We can we can email you a copy. You can download it. We'll get that up here associated with a show. So you can print that out. Take it with you. Use it for each surgeon that you're evaluating to help you choose the person that's right for you. So I hope you found this interesting, entertaining and informative. If you have any questions, please feel free shoot me an email info at Dr Jason hall.com, you can DM me at Dr Jason Hall, thanks for listening. We'll see you on the next show. You.