AHPRA Guidelines: friend or foe? (PART 2)

By James Vivian

Welcome back to Part 2 of navigating our way through the AHPRA guidelines AKA the world is ending (spoiler alert: it’s not!). How are you been finding the transition so far? Are you?

a. All over it?

b. Plodding your way through it slowly?

c. Thinking it doesn’t concern you?

d. Thinking to yourself ‘What’s AHPRA?’

Whatever your answer, I am back to share with you what I am calling Stage 2 of interpreting the AHPRA guidelines. If you recall from last month’s article, Stage 1 was all about deciphering the guidelines e.g. understanding their intention, understanding their relevance to my business, appreciating their existence etc.

Stage 2 is now about putting these into effect and as promised, I wanted to share with you some of the steps we have, so far, taken to embrace the guidelines and protect our business, our clients and industry.

Cut ties with influencers

Whilst working with influencers has never been a high priority for our business (they can be more trouble than it’s worth) we did have a few longstanding relationships with like-minded influencers that we traded our time for access to their audience.

Whilst the guidelines do not forbid businesses working with influencers directly, the guidelines suggest that engaging with influencers can lead people to seek out services for the wrong reasons e.g. they admire the influencer, they desire skin like the influencer.

The guidelines also state the any content created by influencers are the responsibility of the business providing the service. As we all know, we have enough problems with misinformation, fearmongering and gatekeeping already so reducing the noise seemed like a good idea to us.

Removal of emojis and casual therapist titles

Whilst communicating with our community in a frank and easy-tounderstand manner has always been of the utmost importance to us, the use of emojis and other casual language tools were often employed as a point of difference and to add a little fun to the conversation.

The guidelines have flagged the use of emojis and the use of casual therapist titles, such as Skin Wizard, Dermal Magician, Pore Sorcerer etc. as potential risks for reducing the serious nature of higher-risk procedures.

Cease competitions, giveaways etc.

As we may know, running competitions online can be a great way to leverage off influencer or like-minded businesses audiences to increase awareness and followers. What the guidelines suggest is that competitions and giveaways can place the need for procedures in the hands of people who may not want or need these services or who might not be physically or mentally suitable.

We have therefore ceased future competitions, and these include giveaways to local charities, schools and to clients e.g. refer a friend for a discount to you and them.

No more public sharing of before and afters

Again, this is not a requirement from AHPRA to cease the promotion of your before and afters, however, the guidelines do come with some robust requirements for how to share them. For us, we have always thought that before and afters can be a very misleading form of advertising. Of course, there can be some incredible before and afters, both from the perspective of results and image quality.

But even then, take two people who do the exact same treatments, use the exact same products and start off with seemingly the exact skin, these two people can have completely different results. We have made the decision to ban the public use of before and afters to ensure that we do not mislead anyone into thinking they can expect similar results to another client.

Refining our language, both spoken and written

There’s no denying the profound effect that the words we say and write have on a person’s decision to undergo, or not undergo, a treatment or procedure. Through persuasive, emotive and exaggerated conversations we can lure clients into have procedures for the wrong reasons.

Add to this misinformation, demonisation and fearmongering and you can hold an audience in your hand for as long as it takes them to realise what’s going on.

For this reason, we did a thorough sweep through our vocabulary, both written and spoken, to ensure the following:

- No glamorisation e.g. the best treatment for redness, model-ready skin etc.

- No discussion that we are ‘the best’ or any better than anyone else

- No minimisation of the power of treatments or the impact of pain/ downtime e.g. quick and easy, lunch-time facial, no pain or downtime etc.

We have also ensured that whenever we are offering a treatment or treatments as an option that we provide alternative treatments beyond what we offer in our clinic for our clients to consider. We have also ensured that we have thoroughly outlined the downtime and aftercare process as well as provided written instructions for what to do in case of a reaction or, God-forbid, an emergency.

We also share with clients how long a treatment has been around so they can consider its standing in the industry and finally we provide not just a suggested treatment plan to get the job done but also awareness around any required maintenance treatments for full transparency. These all help manage a clients expectations and try to avoid difficult conversations and interactions down the track.

And this is just the start. I need to read through the guidelines a few more times but honestly, I feel so empowered by these guidelines and really want to implement what is relevant and best-practice for our business.

As always, I’d love to hear from anyone who would like to share their experience so far with the guidelines or reach out with any questions, comments and concerns – james@jamesvivian.com.au