5 Questions To Ask Before A Skin Treatment
Can I have a skin consultation before I decide to have a skin treatment?
An initial skin consultation is vital to ensure you can explain your skin concerns and have a practitioner assess this, as well as your medical history to ensure any treatment suggestions are safe for you to have. It should also be an opportunity to ask questions and discuss through a variety of treatment options with your practitioner; it is not an opportunity to be "sold" to.
An initial consultation is also an opportunity for you to "feel out" how comfortable you are with your practitioner and lay the foundations of a trusting professional relationship.
At Lumiere MediSpa in Oxford, we provide free of charge skin consultations with experienced Registered Nurse prescriber, Adrian Baker, and includes:
-A medical history assessment to ensure you are safe to proceed with a treatment
-A visual skin assessment
-Treatment options discussion, with your individual needs and budget taken into account
-An explanation of the risks and benefits of any treatment you wish to receive
-A discussion of any aftercare advice you may need to plan for
Who will be providing my skin treatment?
At Lumiere MediSpa, we firmly believe that a practitioner providing aesthetic non-surgical treatments should be medically qualified, such as a Nurse, Doctor or Dentist. Aesthetic treatments are not suitable to be provided by therapists or other non-medically registered professionals. Ensure this from the outset.
It is also important that the person you are consulting with is the actual person who will be providing your treatment, should you want to go ahead. Not only are you using a consultation to "feel out" your practitioner, but your practitioner will be using this time together to learn about your individual needs and desires for your skin appearance. It should, therefore, be the same person who is actually performing the treatment on you; this avoids any confusion or lost communication in achieveing the results you are wanting to achieve. You may also have built trust in the initial person you have consulted with, and having someone new to perform your treatment will likely increase any anxieties. Ask to consult with the person who will be providing the treatment first.
what is the practitioner's experience?
This question isn't in order to rule out the professionals with less experience; even the most experienced practitioner had to start somewhere. The important aspect is how comfortable you feel that they are able to safely perform the treatment? If they are inexperienced, will they be shadowed by an experienced practitioner? If they are experienced, do they still continue professional development to learn new techniques? Do they provide Aesthetic treatments as a career or is it a sideline they do occasionally? Ensure you feel comfortable with the level of experience your practitioner has.
What are the risks of my skin treatment?
This is possibly one of the most fundamental aspects of any consultation for an aesthetic skin treatment. Like life in general, most skin treatments will carry an element of risk or potential harm. The key to this question though is how the balance of the risk vs benefit lies and how likely a risk is likely to happen. As an example, dermal filler treatments carry a risk of bruising and swelling after treatment, but if the benefit of receiveing the filler improves self confidence or a healthy appearance, then you may be comfortable with this risk vs benefit balance. However, dermal filler treatments also carry a very rare risk of blood vessel blockage that could cause the skin cells to die. This may make you think twice. What may help you balance this risk is the level of experience your practitioner has to deal with this very rare complication. The point here is not to avoid all treatments that carry a risk, but to ensure you have weighed up the risk vs benefit, and importantly how your practitioner can ideally prevent or, if required, treat the complication.
What happens if something goes wrong?
This leads from the last question, and is something you should feel comfortable to ask. The answer should be that the practitioner is trained and experienced to handle all complications that are known and associated with a treatment, or at least has a professional relationship with another health professional that can be referred to. You should be able to acccess your practitioner outside of clinic hours in cases where urgent advice is required, and you should also ensure that the practitioner is fully insured to carry out the treatment.