The Future of Training for Beauty Therapists
18 June 2018
For years, Level 2 and Level 3 Beauty Therapy were considered the as the main qualifications required for a career in beauty therapy.
The last ten years have seen new treatments and equipment being used in the beauty industry, with many of these treatments becoming more and more sophisticated than ever before.During recent decades machines that were previously only operated by medically qualified operators in hospitals are now being used in salons and aesthetic clinics. The beauty industry started seeing problems due to inadequate training, when it became dominated by salespeople who have no financial incentive to provide good quality training to operators. If there were any issues during the treatment, due to the poor or sometimes complete lack of training, therapists often found themselves unable to react to a problem or unexpected event occurring during the treatment, leaving both the therapist and client in a very vulnerable state. Given that many of the machines used in the latest therapies have only migrated from the medical world to the beauty/aesthetics sector very recently, it is sobering to realise that in a hospital a patient/client would be surrounded by a large support organisation of highly trained personnel if a problem were to arise, whereas in a High Street Clinic or beauty salon that would not be the case.
As the industry grows and machine salesmen profit from a public desire to have these new treatments, so should the need for good quality training. Sadly this has not been the case as it is not in the best interest of the machine salesman to spend time and resources on training when he does not have to by law. The UK has some of the lowest standards in Europe when it comes to training for Beauty Therapists and Aestheticians and as a result the industry has banded together in an attempt to make the industry safer and to protect clients. The ever growing number of different treatments from fillers to fat freezing, as well as a dramatic reduction in the cost of the machines, have raised very serious issues of safety. This has prompted many official bodies (Royal College of Nurses, Safety in Beauty and the General Medical Council to name but a few) to push for better training for operators to minimise painful injuries and poor results which often have knock-on effects for the NHS who have to pay to fix the procedure which have gone wrong.
The problem in creating some kind of standard for training is that there are simply too many vested interests and too few knowledgeable authorities on the newer treatments who are willing to help share their expertise, worrying about losing their competitive advantage, when sharing detailed information regarding the treatment with others. Despite this, serious progress has been made by the JCCP (Joint Council of Cosmetic Practitioners) in creating three registers (one for the Public, one for Practitioners and Clinics and one for Education and Training) alongside its general purpose of raising awareness of the importance of safety in the beauty and aesthetics sector. The JCCP works to ensure a basic level of competence for operators in clinics and salons offering advanced treatments and demands a more rigorous standard in training in general. The overriding strategy has been to try and align training standards with teaching levels generally accepted in the education world, known as Levels. The idea behind levelling is to create equivalence between the academic and vocational world. The problem arises in that as many of the treatments being offered in aesthetic clinics are cutting edge and new, there is virtually no reference points for the advanced treatments, other than from the medical world. However many of these treatments have additional but different medical purposes to their aesthetic ones and so the aesthetic treatment is often left misunderstood.
It is interesting to note that Local Councils and Local Authorities (LA), in whose remit the licensing of the establishments fall, have expressed great interest in the work of the JCCP. The first reasons is that they see the need to promote public safety; the second reason is that they can charge a fee for licenses and thereby generate extra income for the council/ LA.
While there is not yet law that practitioners need certain training/ qualifications to carry out treatments, it is self-evident that this will need to change in the near future if the government wants to protect the public and promote safety. It is going to take some time before there is complete unanimity between the many pressure groups within the sector and thus it seems eminently logical as well as practical to insist on trained operators. The question to ask whilst we wait for the regulation and navigate our way through the industry as we know is: what should the responsible clinic or salon do? It goes without saying that the insurance industry is following developments most carefully, as a quick survey comparing prices and terms will demonstrate. It is important to be adequately insured because if things were to go wrong, there would be few excuses because proper training is available.
There are several training establishments offering short courses in advanced treatments and a little research will separate the good quality training from the rest. As medical personnel know through many years of training to qualify, better training produces better results. Equipment salespeople have too much vested interest in selling their equipment to give a fully holistic induction to the treatment, have little incentive to share what the possible dangers surrounding the treatment are and unless they are selling the equipment for a different treatment, do not feel it important to explain how to get the very best results for every client or how to combine treatments. The prudent salon/clinic owner will invest in good quality training not only to boost the results from the treatments they offer, but also to be as safe as possible when dealing with extremely powerful equipment.
Other Press Releases By This Company
- 18/10/2018 - Academy of Advanced Beauty
- 16/08/2018 - Advanced Treatments need more Advanced Training
