Written by: Blaise Geyer PA-C
1. Let’s Take it from the Beginning
The dreaded new patient paperwork. You can’t escape it even in Aesthetic Medicine! Although tedious, this paperwork is so important to us as your providers. Your medical and aesthetic history is like adding color to a black and white photo of you. This gives us insight into your past medical history as well as previous aesthetic involvement. Are there some treatments that are not safe for you? (i.e. Agnes when you have a pacemaker) Have you tried chemical peels in the past for pigment issues with little success? Did your skin react poorly to a laser treatment? This information allows us to guide you towards treatments that are safe and effective for you. Immediately addressing your history also cues us to other things than what you present for, i.e it’s been 4 months since your last Botox treatment or you’re running out of your retinol.
2. It’s More Than Just the Procedures
You’ve heard the rule of thumb that weight loss is due about 75% to diet and only about 25% to exercise? Great skin is, fortunately or unfortunately, very similar. While we may see you once a month for treatments, it’s the skincare products and regimen that you have at home that can make or break your aesthetic goals. So after reviewing your history, we focus on the products that you are currently using so we can fill in the gaps or make improvements in your regimen to help you achieve and maintain your goals.
3. Made Just for You
What makes you tick? What is the reason that you’ve decided to pursue treatments now? Do you have an event coming up that you want to look good for? Learning who you are as a person is so important during the consultation. There may be certain treatments that are best for you to achieve your goals, however, if you can absolutely not stay out of the sun or are face to face with people daily, we may have to alter our plans or plan certain treatments when you have a chance to hole yourself up at home. These factors are so important to devising an individualized plan that accomplishes your goals in a timely fashion, but still fits your lifestyle.
4. The Game Plan
Taking the information we’ve gained, we focus on the things that you like about your physical appearance as well as those areas you want to work on to create your plan. Something that is so common during a consultation is a person presenting for one issue that is, unbeknownst to them, a symptom of another problem. For example, often we have clients that present wanting correction of their nasolabial folds. Nasolabial folds are normal, however, during our natural aging process we begin to lose volume in our upper face that can accentuate these folds. While it is easy enough to fill in the nasolabial folds themselves and call it quits, the result leads to more heaviness in the lower face, squaring the client off and giving them an unnatural appearance. For that reason, we spend a lot of time educating and like to start with treatments that improve volume in the upper face before moving on to the lower face. We also may recommend treatments and products that improve collagen and elasticity so your skin matches your new youthful look. As providers, it is our job to translate your goals into a game plan that will yield natural, beautiful results.
If you have a photo of yourself from your 20s-30s that’s laying around the house, that’s also extremely helpful to bring into your consultation to better identify areas that need attention. Our goal is not to make you look 20-30 years old again, but to restore natural features and make you look great for your age.
Often the treatment plans that we create are accomplished in a stepwise approach through multiple visits. While we love to see your smiling faces, we don’t plan it this way to make you frequent fliers. We choose these treatments and the frequency of your visits because we know what works! While we mirror our treatment strategies with your lifestyle, don’t be afraid of the treatments with longer downtimes too. If those treatments are on your treatment plan, they are there for a reason and are transformative! Focus on the outcome and not the process and you will be amazed at your end results!
Schedule your free consultation today and see what we can do for you!