Undercover footage of a non-surgical training course on facial emulation shows a trainer accidentally puncturing a patient’s blood vessels and increasing the patient’s chance of infection through poor hygiene practices.
Experts who have seen the footage believe that students participating in the course could pose a threat to the general public.
Fillers, Microblading and Botox: Non-Surgical Cosmetic Treatments
Aesthetic or non-surgical beauty treatments such as Botox, microneedling and thread lifts have grown in popularity over the past few years, but aesthetic training courses are almost unregulated.
The government does not require mandatory qualifications for aesthetic practitioners, even though some of their treatments involve needles and can cause serious complications.
Anyone can take this training course and qualify for it. The quality of these aesthetic training courses varies widely, with no mandatory standards.
In Liverpool, England alone, 26 cosmetic training academies were found, offering courses for between £150 and £5,000. The duration of these online courses ranges from a few hours to a few days.
Gemma attended a course that teaches students how to perform a facelift using surgical threads. This procedure is sometimes called a ‘thread lift’.
This process uses the thread that surgeons use to suture wounds. Using a needle, the thread is inserted into the skin and then pulled out upwards
Vincent Wong, a prominent cosmetic doctor, says that ‘thread lift’ is a very dangerous procedure.
“More things can go wrong with injections than with any other treatment,” he says. This is because the threads stay in the skin for a long time and you cannot pull them out.’
“If it works, the results are great, but you can also do irreparable long-term damage.”
Dr. Wong was trained in four different courses for three months before his first ‘thread lift’ surgery.
The thread lifting course at Boss Babes Uni Training Academy is just five hours online followed by a one day practical course in Liverpool.
Gemma, who has over 20 years of nursing experience, was shocked at the unprofessional and unsafe practices taught on the course.
According to Dr. Wong, the thread lift process requires an extraordinary level of disinfection to avoid any infection, but Gemma observed that the tutor who taught the course touched various objects on several occasions and Also touched the patient’s face immediately after, which increased the chances of long-term infection in the patient.
“No effort was made to control the infection,” says Gemma. The tutor performed the whole process on a chair instead of a clean bed. He even discussed the process over a phone call, even asking me to video him on the phone during the entire process.
Gemma told us the needles were still in the patient’s face when the trainer went to post the video clip on social media.
The undercover footage also revealed that the trainer also punctured the same patient’s blood vessels multiple times throughout the process.
“You could see how much pain the patients were in,” says Gemma. He was moaning when he was given injections of hearing in a particular part of the body.
Our nurse also saw patients smoking and drinking before the procedure.
“Most importantly, none of the students left with the technical or practical ability to provide safe and comprehensive treatment, a risk to the people they would treat.” I never expected it to be this bad.
Save Face is a government-approved body of medical practitioners and a safe haven for patients seeking treatment.
He has been highlighting issues regarding aesthetic training, its education and its impact on the public for many years.
Ashton Collins, director of ‘Save Face’, saw the footage and believes that there is “no doubt that people who take this course will have a lot of complications if they do this treatment and procedure.”
Boss Babes Uni Training Academy is not registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC), the Care Quality Commission which monitors and inspects healthcare providers.
This thread lift course was conducted by a registered nurse. It is an offense for medical professionals to perform a thread lift without being registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC).
When EP Three contacted Boss Babes Uni with these concerns, they said: “The safety of our customers and the quality of our training are our top priorities.”
Boss Bibbs was concerned to learn of the allegations from Uni EP but claimed he did not have much detail to respond to.
Discovery of unorganized industry
According to beauty influencer Aanchal Saida, cosmetic surgery became an important tool in building her confidence.
Aanchal Saida is a makeup artist and has more than two lakh subscribers on YouTube. Aanchal is one of the first YouTubers to open up about cosmetic surgery.
“I haven’t come across any South Asian (influencer) who has openly talked about having cosmetic surgery and then I thought we shouldn’t be ashamed of it,” she says.
“I also had micro-needling, facials and laser treatments.”
To know more about these courses we sent Aanchal for a course in micro needling. Aanchal has done this surgery before but she has no experience of performing it herself.
The entire course was delivered online via Zoom, after which Aanchal was asked to test it on a person and send a picture of it to the trainer.
The training was over after only one and a half hours. “It was very easy,” says Anchal. The trainer talked about microneedling on a power point. Live is not shown doing anything. They didn’t even have a micro-needling pen to show for it.
“I couldn’t believe it when they said now you can go and do this experiment on someone.”
“The course did not cover hygiene principles, sterilization of instruments and needlestick injuries.”
BBC Three showed Anchal’s microneedling course to Dr Wong. He told us that the course “does not guarantee that students can perform the procedure safely.”
“It is not safe to perform this procedure without proper technique and proper hands-on guidance for face-to-face assessment.”
“These courses can have serious effects on the public.”