Subtleties of choosing a plastic surgeon
When choosing a specialist, you may have difficulties due to the fact that in Russia there is no official licensing for such a specialty as plastic surgery.
A large number of practicing surgeons are licensed as “surgical cosmetologists.”
For this document you must have at least 2 years of experience in oral and maxillofacial surgery. But such a short experience is clearly not enough to obtain a full qualification.
Therefore, you will have to collect and check information about plastic surgeons yourself.
Second tip
It is often recommended to carefully check the surgeon’s documents, but this advice does not at all insure the patient against an unsuccessful operation. It doesn’t matter that the clinic has a big name; in any clinic there can be both good surgeons and not very worthy ones. Therefore, it is necessary to choose not a clinic, but a specific surgeon.
By the way, if the result of the operation does not satisfy you, then the court will not even consider your claim. But this applies only to the aesthetic side of the issue; if the doctor caused damage to health, then it is necessary to go to court.
Collecting information
Step 1. List of plastic surgeons
First of all, make a list of plastic surgeons who must meet two main parameters:
- perform the operation you need,
- be in your city.
The list will be large if we take into account large cities.
Step 2: Find out the facts
So, after compiling the list, you need to thin it out. Find out exactly what the basic facts are behind the flashy advertisements.
Check your qualifications and experience in the field of plastic surgery, draw conclusions about the quality of the work done, etc.
Your task is to remove half of the list!
When choosing a plastic surgeon, study not only the information available on the Internet, but also attend 5-8 consultations in person.
Third tip
It is recommended to contact a surgeon who is well-known and values his reputation. But what is fame? The famous surgeon simply knows how to advertise himself correctly. Of course, if a plastic surgeon operates on stars, then a mere mortal is unlikely to have enough money to operate on him.
It’s also not worth paying special attention to titles, certificates and membership in many organizations; each surgeon, as a rule, has a huge number of letters, certificates and other things.
We study the quality indicators of a plastic surgeon
The main quality indicators when choosing a plastic surgeon are:
- higher education;
- work experience and qualifications;
- speciality;
- examples of previously completed work;
- patient reviews;
- price policy.
Education
Plastic surgery was approved as a specialty relatively recently.
Based on this document, any person who has experience from the list below can be called a plastic surgeon in Russia.
Has a higher education in one of the following specialties:
Pediatrics,- Dentistry or
- Medical business.
He completed residency in the following specialties, and also completed professional training in the specialty of Plastic Surgery :
- Obstetrics and gynecology,
- Plastic surgery,
- Pediatric surgery,
- Surgery,
- Urology,
- Thoracic surgery,
- Maxillofacial Surgery.
At least once every 5 years he improved his qualifications in the specialty of plastic surgery.
Set of documents
Therefore, the minimum list of documents that confirms the surgeon’s right to perform plastic surgery should be as follows:
- Diploma of Higher Education;
- A plastic surgery specialist certificate is required;
- certificate of advanced training in the specialties of plastic surgery.
These documents will not be enough to fully develop professional skills.
In addition, it is important to have a certain specialized education.
This ensures that the plastic surgeon is knowledgeable about the anatomy of the body parts they will be working on.
It is desirable that the plastic surgeon performing rhinoplasty has some ENT training, and the doctor specializing in male intimate plastic surgery has in-depth knowledge of andrology and urology.
Experience and qualifications
Plastic surgery is mastered by error, trial, and experimentation. That is why, when choosing a specialist, you need to clarify how long, where and under whose leadership this doctor went through these stages of training.
When choosing a plastic surgeon, you should pay attention to his professionalism and experience.
Only extensive practice distinguishes a high professional from an amateur. Therefore, a plastic surgeon at a clinic with two or three years of experience, in principle, cannot call himself a professional.
On average, a surgeon must have at least 10 years of experience.
And most importantly, a well-known clinic will not be a guarantee for a plastic surgeon. When choosing a specialist, be guided only by his personal work list.
But it will be very difficult to find out how many operations a particular surgeon has performed. Only the surgeon himself can answer this question, but there is no 100% guarantee of his sincerity. But of course it is necessary to find out this information.
A plastic surgeon must be a member of the Russian Society of Plastic Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons (OPREH). This organization has a number of strict requirements for the qualifications of surgeons.
Currently, many surgeons act not entirely honestly, assigning themselves the status of a member of the OPREH, but in fact they are not one, so this information must be carefully checked. The list of surgeons-members of the OPREH can be found on the website of this organization, and the fact of membership can be clarified with its secretary.
In addition to qualifications, a plastic surgeon must have certificates of completion of various training courses and seminars. These certificates are issued by various organizations. Therefore, it is quite difficult to assess their reliability, and choosing based on the principle that the more certificates the better is completely wrong.
Certificates, diplomas and patents displayed on the website of the clinic where the plastic surgeon works, as well as on his door and inside the office itself, can create the image of a true professional. Although, as a rule, they do not reflect the real semantic load.
Specialization
When choosing a surgeon, you need to make sure that the operation you require is his main and priority. It is one thing for a surgeon to operate frequently, but it is quite another to specialize in performing it, performing it every day.
Don't choose a plastic surgeon who only performs the surgery you need twice a year. In this situation, he can hardly be called professional. A good surgeon operates often and a lot, and not occasionally.
Portfolio
Almost every plastic surgeon has a portfolio of his operations. For reasons of confidentiality, you will not be able to view his work on the website, only during a personal consultation.
Looking at a plastic surgeon’s portfolio, three main conclusions can be drawn:
. A large number of photographs indicates a large number of operations performed. It would be strange if a surgeon with many years of experience does not have at least hundreds of photographs of the operations performed.
Plastic surgeon experience- Quality . Looking at the photos of operations and the results after should show you whether this doctor is doing a good job. If you don't like the pictures after surgery, contact another specialist.
- Individual approach . When considering a portfolio, it is also worth paying attention to how individual the final result after the operation is.
If a surgeon has a video portfolio, that’s great. It is worth familiarizing yourself with it, because by observing the operation you can understand how responsibly this specialist approaches his work.
Reviews
This is the most difficult part. A large number of positive reviews from the surgeon does not mean anything.
We advise you to trust the reviews of your friends and acquaintances, or those people with whom you personally know. When communicating with these people, you can be confident in what you will hear. It is worth noting an important point: we must talk specifically about the same plastic surgery.
If we consider online reviews, then a large number of positive responses relate to the so-called custom reviews.
At the same time, it is quite difficult to distinguish a real review from a fake. It happens that a custom review is written by a person who even posts before and after photos, and also actively communicates in the chat, but in reality it is just a fake.
Therefore, it will be extremely difficult to draw the right conclusions when choosing a surgeon based on positive reviews on the Internet.
Everyone knows that we like to praise less than to complain. Therefore, there are also a large number of negative reviews on the Internet. And a good review may not appear online at all.
First tip
Many people advise listening to “word of mouth”, that is, contacting only the surgeon with whom a friend underwent surgery or was satisfied with the result. In this case, the chance of finding a good surgeon is slightly more than 50%. The fact is that any surgeon has both successful operations and not very successful ones. If we talk about a good surgeon, then his failure rate should not exceed 3%, but there is no guarantee that you will not fall into this minimum failure rate. Or perhaps the surgeon is mediocre and has a high percentage of failures, while your friend simply fell into the percentage of successful operations. The second point is that if you need rhinoplasty, and a particular doctor performed successful liposuction on your friend, this does not mean that you should run to this particular doctor. To choose the right plastic surgeon, you need to find exactly the one who successfully performs the operation that you need.
