28/05/2026
It’s long but worth a read this was posted by admin on an Aesthetics Support Group.
I just want to say that this is one of the best written explanations and educational pieces I’ve ever read about the differences in qualifications within our industry and the many different pathways into aesthetics.
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I am going to say this very clearly, because this group was not created yesterday, and it was certainly not created as a waiting room for people who believe that their professional title gives them automatic intellectual, moral, or clinical superiority over everyone else.
This group was started approximately seven years ago as a support group for aesthetic practitioners. That means all aesthetic practitioners. Nurses, doctors, dentists, pharmacists, beauty therapists, independent aesthetic practitioners, experienced injectors, new practitioners, those with prescribing qualifications, those without prescribing qualifications, and those who have come into aesthetics by a different educational route.
It is owned and run by 'non-medics'. (I dislike that term enormously as the term 'medic' is thrown around far too freely - doctors are medics.). It was not created as a hierarchy, and it was not created so that one group of practitioners could sit at the top of an imaginary professional staircase and look down at everyone else. It was created because I wanted to bring the industry together. In retrospect, that is something that may never happen because some appear to think they are superior to others.
I am seeing, with increasing disappointment, some of the same tired language being repeated again and again, particularly around so-called “non-medics” (nurses are non medics - hence non medic prescribers), “lay injectors," (we are not packets of crisps" and “beauticians” (none of us are beauticians as that is level 1 beauty), as though those words somehow prove the argument. They do not. They merely reveal the attitude behind it.
A nursing degree does not, by itself, make someone intrinsically more intelligent than an aesthetic practitioner who has come through beauty, skin, laser, advanced aesthetics, anatomy, complication management, practical injecting experience, business ownership, client care, and years of independent professional development. A title may tell people which route someone took, but it does not tell anyone how careful they are, how educated they are, how ethical they are, how observant they are, how experienced they are, or how competent they are in aesthetics. Unless someone is a maxillofacial surgeon, and even then one might reasonably ask why they are choosing fillers over surgery, the title itself proves very little about practical aesthetic ability.
Training is training. Competence is competence. Experience is experience. Evidence is evidence. I do not consider myself to be thick or hopeless at aesthetics. I have run a successful business now for many years and I have a huge client base. You cannot please every client, but I seem to have been caring enough to have pleased most of them. The only reason I started in aesthetics was because I had four different nurses working with me and, quite honestly, they were dreadful. Last week, funnily enough, I had a lady come in who had been scarred for life by one of those nurses and another lady who had her lips badly overfilled by another. Most of the complications I see have been done by nurses and pharmacists, and yes, doctors too.
There is good and bad in all practitioners, and none of us are perfect. There is a little thing called human factors: errors that anyone can make at any time, and those are acceptable as long as proper care has been taken and lessons have been learnt.
Quite honestly, many nurses and doctors come into the aesthetics sector having been told, wrongly, that their knowledge is enough to do treatments, and oftentimes they simply do not have the practical experience, especially if they only work one day a week in aesthetics or have done a very short course with next to no models. I have heard this many times, that companies simply do not give them enough models because they assume they will know how to inject, and they do not.
It is also rather ironic that the same people who sneer at independent aesthetic practitioners are often perfectly content to sit in this group, read the answers, ask questions, learn from others, and benefit from the very people they seem so eager to patronise. Some of the most thoughtful, measured, technically aware comments in this industry come from practitioners who do not hold a nursing title. Equally, some of the most simplistic and ill-informed comments I have ever seen have come from people with protected titles. That is not an attack on nurses, doctors, or any other profession. It is simply a reminder that a title is not a personality transplant, nor is it a guarantee of wisdom.
If independent aesthetic practitioners are supposedly too unintelligent, too uneducated, or too unsuitable to be in this industry, then what exactly happens when those same practitioners go to university to qualify as nurses? Do they suddenly become acceptable? Do they become clever on graduation day? Do they acquire judgement, dexterity, ethics, and professional seriousness only when a certificate says “nursing” rather than aesthetics? Or does that uncomfortable question expose the weakness of the argument?
Because, frankly, it cannot be both ways.
People cannot spend years telling independent aesthetic practitioners that they are not good enough unless they become nurses, and then complain when those same practitioners decide to do exactly that. If the argument is that nursing is the only acceptable route, then people should not be surprised when practitioners take that route. If the argument is that those practitioners should not take a nursing place because they want to work in aesthetics, then the real position is not about standards at all. It is about exclusion.
That is the part many people are no longer disguising very well.
And that attitude has no place in this group.
For absolute clarity, nurses are welcome here. Doctors are welcome here. Prescribers are welcome here. Independent aesthetic practitioners are welcome here. Beauty-trained aesthetic practitioners are welcome here. People who are respectful, thoughtful, honest, and willing to learn are welcome here.
What is not welcome is professional snobbery dressed up as public safety.
What is not welcome is the lazy assumption that a nursing title automatically places someone above the rest of the aesthetics industry.
What is not welcome is the continual use of language designed to belittle experienced practitioners who have built businesses, invested thousands into training, treated clients safely for years, and contributed to this industry long before some of the loudest voices arrived in it.
If you genuinely believe you are better than other people in this group because you are a nurse, or because you hold any other professional title, then this is probably not the right group for you. That is not said with hostility. It is said because this group is intended to support aesthetic practitioners, not to provide an audience for misplaced professional superiority. If you believe you are better, then you won't learn anything anyway.
Aesthetics requires knowledge, skill, judgement, ethics, humility, and continued learning. It does not benefit from arrogance. It does not benefit from people repeating terminology they barely understand in order to demean others. It certainly does not benefit from practitioners attempting to turn an entire industry into a contest of titles rather than competence.
Many of us have spent years watching independent aesthetic practitioners be insulted, undermined, and blamed for every perceived problem in aesthetics, while at the same time being copied, questioned, relied upon, and quietly learned from. That contradiction has not gone unnoticed.
So, let us keep this group useful, respectful, and honest.
If you are here to ask questions, share knowledge, debate properly, challenge fairly, or support practitioners across the industry, you are very welcome.
If you are here because you need to remind everyone that you are “above” others because of your title, then the door is open, and you are free to leave voluntarily.
This group is for aesthetic practitioners whatever their background - We are all still learning.
