In short: When choosing an aesthetic practitioner in Ireland, check their professional registration, their training and their experience in the specific treatment you are considering. Ask who will carry out the procedure, what the risks and alternatives are, and who looks after you afterwards. A good consultation gives you time to ask questions and understand the recommendation before you agree to anything.
In this guide:
- What to look for in a practitioner
- What qualifications they should have
- Four checks to make before booking
- What to ask at your consultation
- Why a practitioner might advise against treatment
Most people who sit down in my consulting room have already done the reading. They know what the treatment is called. They have looked at the before/after photographs and videos. What they have not been able to settle, and what is usually sitting underneath everything else they ask us, is a simpler question: how do I know you are any good?
It is a fair question, and it is harder to answer in this field than it should be.
What should you look for in an aesthetic practitioner?
Look for three things: the right registration, real experience in the treatment you want, and a clear plan for looking after you afterwards. You are choosing a person as much as a treatment.
When someone asks us what a treatment involves, they are rarely only asking about the treatment. They are working out whether they can trust the person describing it. That instinct is correct. In aesthetic medicine, the result depends less on the device or the product than on the judgement of the person using it, and judgement is the one thing a website cannot show you.
So this is about how to work out who should do it, written so that it is useful to you when you are choosing the clinic for your treatments.
What qualifications should an aesthetic practitioner have?
In Ireland, a doctor must be registered with the Medical Council, and a nurse must be registered with the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Ireland (NMBI). Titles such as “cosmetic doctor” or “aesthetic practitioner” describe the work someone does, not a qualification, so ask what training sits behind them.
The language in this field is loose, and that is where most confusion starts.
Doctor. Every doctor practising in Ireland must be registered with the Medical Council, and the register is public. It shows whether a doctor is registered and in which division.
Plastic surgeon. This is a recognised surgical speciality with a long, formal training pathway. A surgeon who has completed it appears on the Specialist Division of the register under that speciality. A doctor can only practise independently as a specialist if they hold specialist registration.
Cosmetic doctor, aesthetic doctor, aesthetic practitioner. These describe what a person does rather than a qualification they hold. A doctor using one of these descriptions may have fifteen years of focused training behind it or a weekend course. The title alone does not tell you which.
Nurse injectors and prescribers. Experienced aesthetic nurses do excellent work. Nurses are registered with the NMBI, not the Medical Council, and you can search that register by last name or registration number. The question is not whether a nurse can treat you well, because many can. It is who assessed you, who prescribed, and who is reachable if something needs attention afterwards.
Registration, specialist registration and experience in a particular treatment are three different things. Registration tells you someone is entitled to practise. Specialist registration tells you they have completed formal specialist training. Neither tells you how often they perform the treatment you are considering, so ask about that separately.
The practical takeaway: read the qualification first.
Four checks to make before booking aesthetic treatment
Check the register, ask about experience with your specific treatment, look at how their work has been judged by other professionals, and ask what happens if something is not right. You can do all of this in about twenty minutes, before you book anything.
One: check the register properly. Ask for the practitioner’s registration number. Search for it on the Medical Council register for a doctor, or the NMBI register for a nurse. Then open the full record by clicking on the registration number, because that is where any conditions, undertakings or restrictions are shown. If you cannot find someone by name, do not assume the worst straight away. Doctors are sometimes registered under a different name or spelling, such as a married name, which is why the number is the most reliable way to search. If anything is still unclear, contact the Medical Council at info@mcirl.ie.
Two: ask how long they have been doing this particular thing. A surgeon who has performed something several hundred times has met the version of it that goes differently, and knows what to do about it. Experience in aesthetic medicine is largely a record of having seen the unusual case before.
Three: look at who taught them, and who they teach. Doctors who teach their technique to other doctors have had their work examined by people qualified to judge it. Published work and faculty positions are harder to earn than a marketing page. Treat this as one signal among several. Teaching shows that other professionals respect someone’s technique, but it does not replace asking about their own recent experience with your treatment and how they handle aftercare.
Four: ask what happens if something is not right. Every honest practitioner will tell you that occasionally a result needs adjusting or a complication needs managing. What matters is whether there is a plan for it, whether the person who treated you is the person who manages it, and whether you can reach them quickly. A clinic that has never had to answer this question has either been lucky or is not telling you the whole truth.
What should you ask at an aesthetic consultation?
Ask who will treat you, how much experience they have with this treatment, what the realistic limits and risks are, and what happens if you need help afterwards. A consultation runs both ways. These are the questions we would want asked of us.
- Are you the person who will carry out the treatment?
- How many of these have you done, and over what period?
- What are the realistic limits of what this can achieve for my face specifically?
- What would you do instead if I were your sister, or your brother?
- What could go wrong, how often does it happen, and what happens then?
- What does this look like in five years if I do nothing further?
The last two matter most.
It also helps to know what a useful answer sounds like. For some of the most common questions, this is what to listen for.
| Question | A helpful answer includes |
|---|---|
| Who will carry out my treatment? | Their name, their role (for example doctor, surgeon or nurse) and how often they perform this treatment. |
| What happens if I have a complication? | Who to contact, how to reach them out of hours, and when your follow-up appointments are. |
| What does my quote include? | The treatment itself, any planned review appointments, and how any extra care would be charged. |
| Can I take time to decide? | A clear yes, with a written plan you can take away and the chance to come back with more questions. |
We go through what happens on our side of the desk in what we ask you before a treatment.
Why might a practitioner advise against treatment?
A good practitioner will say no when another treatment would suit you better, when the change you want would alter your face rather than refresh it, or when the timing or expectations are not right.
We turn people away. Sometimes the concern is better addressed by a treatment we do not offer. Sometimes what is being asked for would change a face rather than refresh it, which is not what we do. And sometimes the timing is wrong, or the expectation is not one any treatment could meet.
Saying so is not a lost sale. It is the reason the people we do treat get the result they came for. If you are choosing a clinic, ask when they last said no to someone, and listen carefully to the answer.
Our own view, after more than twenty years of this, is straightforward. The best outcome in aesthetic medicine is one nobody can identify. You look rested rather than altered. People say you look grand. Getting there depends far more on the assessment than on the procedure, and the assessment depends on the professional doing it.
That is why the question you started with, how do I know you are any good, is the right one to ask. Ask it of everyone you see, including us.
About the author
Dr Peter Prendergast is the founder and medical director of Venus Medical in Dundrum, Dublin, which he established in 2005. He graduated in medicine and surgery from University College Cork in 1999 and is a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. He founded the European College of Aesthetic Medicine and Surgery in 2008 and is the author of two textbooks, Aesthetic Medicine: Art and Techniques (2011) and High Definition Body Sculpting (Springer, 2014).
