Who Is Injecting Your Face?
To say that the demand for anti-ageing injectables, such as Botox, is increasing year on year would be an understatement. Research company Mintel reports that in 2010, non-surgical treatments accounted for 90% of all cosmetic procedures in the UK, and facial injectables represent a very large proportion of that business.
Recent ‘horror stories’ in the press, such as the mother injecting her eight year old daughter makes the mind boggle. In a few cases, women have taken their ‘on-line’ purchases to a professional practitioner, asking that their ‘who knows what it is’ product should be injected into their faces. All of the above calls for clarity.
And who better to clarify the situation than the British Association of Cosmetic Nurses. Because nurses administer 70% of all anti-ageing injectables. This might be a surprising statistics but it is also a reassuring one. After all, treatment from a nurse means being in professional hands. A patient feels secure, knowing that the person injecting her face is a bona fide, fully-qualified nurse who has chosen to specialise in aesthetics.
These days, many cosmetic nurses have their own businesses, or work in aesthetic practices where they – not necessarily their cosmetic surgeon or dermatologist bosses – do the injectables.
In the UK, there is no regulatory body for so-called ‘injectors’ and no accredited training. This means that words such as ‘qualified’ and ‘expert’ can be meaningless in the aesthetics field. Anyone – not just doctors, dentists and nurses – can set up as an injector; this now includes a growing number of beauty and massage therapists and tattooists. Which is partly why the British Association of Cosmetic Nurses – the BACN – was established last year.
Its members are all fully-qualified nurses, registered with the NMC – the Nursing & Midwifery Council – and accountable to that organisation. Naturally, the BACN is concerned that some ‘aesthetic practitioners’ do not have the necessary skills and experience to work on a patient’s face with a needle and syringe.
“Terms such as ‘fully qualified’ and ‘an expert practitioner’ can be absolutely meaningless,” warns Emma Davies, Acting Chair of the BACN and herself a nurse practitioner of some 12 years’ standing. “The lack of regulations in the UK can make this a minefield. But the BACN gives people the reassurance that its members are accountable to the standards of their professional body, the NMC.
“The words, ‘aesthetic practitioner’, tell one very little. But someone who gives their status as ‘an aesthetic nurse’ – that is a professional category that can be checked and trusted,” she emphasises.
The BACN now has a membership of 270 aesthetic nurses working countrywide. For many years, nurses have had a primary role in administering injections – including, training doctors to inject. It is perhaps not surprising, therefore, that cosmetic nurses have taken the lead in the field of anti-ageing injectables.
