filler training for nurses Archives

Are you a nurse looking for a new direction? Still keen to keep using your practical and personal skills to change people’s lives?

There could be a home for you in aesthetic nursing.

The aesthetic industry is booming – and the non-surgical side in particular. Demand for non-invasive aesthetic treatments is now growing faster than cosmetic surgery.

And nurses have been at the forefront of the aesthetic revolution. They’ve been treating and caring for aesthetic patients since the early 1980s.

There are over 4,000 Aesthetic Nurses currently practising in the UK. So how do you go about joining them?

Aesthetic Nurse training – the requirements

While a minority of Aesthetic Nurses work in cosmetic surgery, most work on the non-surgical side.

Either based in clinics or self-employed in their own practices, they offer treatments like cosmetic injectables (Botox, dermal fillers), skin peels, sclerotherapy and medical micro-needling.

The most popular treatments by far are injectables. So if you’re serious about becoming an Aesthetic Nurse, you’ll need to pursue training in Botox and dermal fillers.

As long as you’re a Registered Nurse with current registration with the NMC, you’re eligible to train in the use of Botox and fillers.

Training can be completed in one day, and will qualify you to offer both Botox and filler treatments to your own patients.

But bear in mind that Botulinum Toxin is a prescription-only medicine. So unless you’re a Nurse Prescriber, you’ll always need to work with someone else who can prescribe it.

For that reason, we’d recommend your Aesthetic Nurse training also includes an Independent Nurse Prescriber Course. These are offered on a part-time basis at colleges and universities and can usually be completed in around 4 months.

Being able to prescribe Botulinum Toxin, as well as administer it, will make you a valuable asset to potential employers. It’ll also make it easier to set up and run your own business further down the line.

Other Aesthetic Nurse training options

Once you’ve trained in Botox and fillers, you’re ready to start practising as an Aesthetic Nurse. But in time, you’ll probably want to be able to offer more treatments to your patients.

You can add more to your repertoire at your own pace, as and when you’re ready. It’s simply a case of deciding which treatments you’d like to offer your patients, and completing the appropriate course.

Most non-surgical treatments only need a one-day course, letting you get up to speed very quickly. At Cosmetic Courses, we offer a wide range of one-day courses, including Microsclerotherapy, Chemical Peels, Dermaroller and Platelet Rich Plasma Therapy.

You might also want to consider advanced Botox and dermal filler courses to learn more specialist techniques like chemical brow lift and peri-oral sculpting.

Whatever you choose to learn on your Aesthetic Nurse training journey, it’s a great time to get on the aesthetics learning curve.

If the UK market keeps growing (and with an increasing – and ageing – population, it seems likely), you can expect to carve out an extremely rewarding career, both financially and professionally.

Find out more about Aesthetic Nurse training

Cosmetic Courses are the UK’s most established aesthetic training provider, with centres in Buckinghamshire, London, Kent, Birmingham and Manchester.

To date, we’ve trained over 3,000 nurses and other medical professionals to administer safe, effective treatments to their patients. Want to find out more about our Aesthetic Nurse training courses? Give us a call on 01844 318317 or email [email protected].

Pain relief using local anaesthetic for dermal filler injections

Dermal filler injections are more uncomfortable for the patient than other treatments such as BOTOX® treatment.

This depends on the area treated, with the lips in particular being very uncomfortable because of their denser nerve endings in this area. Many patients are deterred from having dermal filler injections into their lips because of the discomfort of the procedure.

Traditionally, practitioners have used dental blocks blocking the infra-orbital and mental nerves in a similar fashion to that used for the dentist for dental treatment.

While this type of local anaesthetic is very effective at reducing discomfort from the lips during injections, making it almost completely pain free, it has the disadvantage that the local anaesthetic can also affect the muscle tone of the lips.
By reducing the muscle tone they decrease your patient’s ability to contract the muscle and produce the lines which you aim to treat.

At Cosmetic Courses we always advise our trainees to first of all mark the lines they wish to treat prior to inserting the dental blocks so that the landmarks are retained.

Although the marking technique does give indication as to the areas that require volume adjustment, due to a decreased subcutaneous tissue it is not as accurate as seeing the areas for yourself with the muscles contracted which is often not possible with dental blocks.

Whilst EMLA and other topical anaesthetics such as Ametop offer some pain relief this is not complete and, even if these are used, dermal fillers are uncomfortable.

With Juvederm®, the Allergan company introduced a product with local anaesthetic combined with the hyaluronic acid.
This has significant advantages in that, although the first injection is of normal tenderness, the local anaesthetic does permeate through the area and each subsequent injection becomes less painful.

We have found that, if dermal fillers which contain lignocaine are used correctly, the discomfort from dermal filler injections (even in the lips) is significantly reduced and is very tolerable for most of our patients.

Our current preference is to use a dermal filler containing local anaesthetics in the peri-oral area as this has the dual advantage of producing good pain relief for the patient and also preserving the muscle activity allowing you to accurately place the dermal fillers in the correct position.

If you would like to know more about these techniques with dermal fillers to reduce the discomfort for your patients please contact the Cosmetic Courses office on 08452 304 110 or via email at [email protected] to discuss your training needs.