Clear Communication: Key to Aesthetic Treatment Success

In this week’s episode, Dr. Teri Fisher delves into a fundamental aspect of aesthetic medicine: expectations. Dr. Fisher explores the pivotal role expectations play for both clients and providers.

Picture this: You order a medium-rare steak, but it arrives well done. The breakdown? Communication. Similarly, in aesthetic medicine, clear expectations are crucial. They pave the path for favorable outcomes.

Safety is paramount in Dr. Fisher’s practice. Clear communication ensures treatments align with the client’s best interests. If a treatment isn’t advisable, he’s transparent. It’s about safeguarding the client’s well-being.

Customized treatments are where the magic unfolds. Effective communication is key to understanding the client’s desires and managing expectations realistically. It’s a collaborative effort.

Expertise is the backbone of Dr. Fisher’s practice. Staying abreast of advancements ensures evidence-based discussions. By managing expectations based on current technologies, we foster trust.

Natural results are a cornerstone. Clients seek to appear refreshed, not overly done. Aligning expectations with Dr. Fisher’s vision—subtle enhancements—promotes satisfaction.

An enjoyable experience ties it all together. Clear expectations, coupled with a comfortable environment, enhance client satisfaction. It’s about crafting memorable experiences.

Communication is a two-way street. Clients must articulate their expectations, just as Dr. Fisher does. Through dialogue, we sculpt a shared vision for optimal results.

While techniques and products are essential, communication precedes all. By setting clear expectations, we lay the groundwork for transformative outcomes.

We encourage you to ponder these insights before your next aesthetic journey. For daily updates, tune in to “Aesthetic Medicine Minute” and connect with Dr. Fisher on Instagram @DrTeriFisher. Your journey to sculpted confidence begins with clarity.

Key Insights

• Clear communication about expectations is crucial in aesthetic medicine.
• Clear expectations lead to better outcomes for both clients and providers.
• Safety is the top pillar in aesthetic medicine, emphasizing the importance of clear and honest communication to avoid negative impacts on patients.
• Customized treatments require clear conversations between clients and providers to achieve good and personalized results.
• Expertise in aesthetic medicine involves discussing what is evidence-based and what can realistically be achieved with available technology and products.
• Natural results are essential in aesthetics, with communication of desired outcomes being key to meeting client expectations.
• Creating an enjoyable experience ties into setting clear expectations, leading to a pleasant experience for clients.
• Patients should also clarify their expectations with providers to ensure the best results.
• Communication is key before any aesthetic treatment to establish expectations and achieve incredible results.

Episode Transcript

Dr. Teri Fisher: Hey there and welcome to this week’s episode of the podcast. As always, absolute pleasure to have you along this week. Today, I’m going to be talking about a topic that is really important to all consultations when it comes to aesthetic medicine. And this is specifically about expectations, expectations on the part of the client, the patient, and also expectations on the part of the provider.

The reason this has come to mind is that recently I was at a wonderful dinner, and it was an educational, a continuing medical education dinner, and we had a wonderful speaker talking about this issue, expectations and why it is so important to be clear about expectations.

Ultimately, it helps to have better outcomes. That’s the bottom line, a little bit of a spoiler alert there because if expectations aren’t clear, then we really don’t know what we are getting ourselves into as providers and patients don’t know what they are getting themselves into as the client.

Let me start off with a little bit of an analogy. Imagine this: you go to a wonderful restaurant and you’ve ordered a wonderful steak and you’ve asked to have it done, medium-rare, but it arrives well done. Not exactly what you expected, right? Well, what was the issue there? Somewhere along the line communication didn’t happen. Maybe it was in the process of the ordering that it wasn’t communicated clearly what you wanted. Maybe that was fine, but the communication between the waiter and the chef wasn’t clear. Maybe that’s where the communication broke down. Or it is also possible that perhaps the chef forgot or wasn’t paying attention. The bottom line is that there are lots of reasons why the outcome wasn’t what you were hoping for.

When it comes to aesthetic medicine, this is even more important because the stakes, no pun intended, are a little bit higher in this case. So, what I want to do is I want to talk a little bit about the expectations, the role of expectations and how that impacts the different pillars that I see as critically important in my practice.

So first off, let’s talk about safety, because that’s my number one pillar. Within aesthetics, do no harm goes beyond just avoiding complications. It’s about ensuring the treatment that we choose does not negatively impact a patient. One of the ways that we can ensure that the treatment is not negatively impacting someone is having clear and honest communication. Because quite frankly, if a client comes to me and they tell me that they want to have some sort of treatment done that I think is not going to be in their best interests, maybe it’s something that is out of the realm of what I would consider to be a normal treatment, and there are lots of other reasons that this may be the case as well. But the bottom line is if there is something that I don’t feel will be in the patient’s best interest then it is my responsibility to communicate that because I have to set those expectations that I don’t think this is going to be in your best interest. And I have to ensure that the client understands that as well. So that’s just one example of where that comes into play.

When it comes to customized treatments, this is really where the magic happens. Imagine again that you went into a barber and you asked to get a haircut, but you didn’t tell the barber specifically what you want. Not ideal. And of course, you’re going to see a recurring theme here, this comes down to communication. So when a client comes in, this is absolutely essential to getting good results, but also making sure that the results are customized. We have to have a clear conversation about what it is that the client wants. We also have to have a clear conversation about what I realistically can do given the situation. We also have to communicate clearly about what I cannot do, what will be impossible or beyond what we would expect results to show when we do some type of aesthetic treatment. And it is only through clear communication between the client and myself can we really then come to a realization of what we can do with a treatment in the clinic.

When we get to the expertise, this is really exciting for me because we live in a wonderful time when it comes to aesthetic medicine. We have advancements that are happening at the speed of light. But there’s also a lot of responsibility on my end, and this is how I have to weave this expertise into the discussion about what we can or can’t do, based on the technology and the products that we have available today and the products and technologies that I trust. There are always new things coming out. And it’s really important that for me, I stay on top of those, but also that when I’m having these discussions about expectations of what we can and can’t do that, I focus them on what is evidence-based and what I know the products and the technology will allow for today.

When it comes to natural results, as you may know, this is another one of my pillars. And I can’t tell you how many times clients come in and they say they want to look refreshed, but not done. And this again goes back to the discussion, the communication about expectations. If the expectation of a client is that they want to look exactly as I described, refreshed, but they don’t want it to look overly done, then I love that because that is my goal with my treatments. But it’s clear to set that expectation of what that will look like, because if a client comes in and they’re looking for very, very dramatic results, and we don’t have a clear communication about that and in my mind, I’m thinking I want to make this person look fabulous, but natural and like as if you were photo-shopped, but nobody can quite put their finger on what was done. That is the ideal situation in my mind. But again, if somebody is coming in and are looking for some dramatic improvements, not to say I can’t do that, but the expectation comes down to the communication, and that has to be clear between us.

And lastly, it all ties into having an enjoyable experience and that’s my fifth pillar. If the expectations are set, and we are clear, and we know what we are trying to achieve. And we know what can be done, realistically, what cannot be done realistically, and overall, we make the experience as pleasant as possible, than this creates an enjoyable experience for my clients. And that is why these five pillars that I speak about quite often, the safety, the customized treatments, the expertise, the natural results and the enjoyable experiences, are so critical to me when it comes to meeting patient, client expectations.

So, of course this is a two way street. I am always trying to clarify expectations of patients. I think it’s really important that patients clarify the expectations of the providers as well. I’m always happy to discuss that, answer questions, tell you my thoughts, tell you my feelings about what we can and can’t do, and I think it is through excellent communication that you really get the best results. I know there’s a lot of talk about what fillers to use, what doses of neuromodulators to use, where to place them, the techniques, whether you use a needle, whether you use a cannula and don’t get me wrong, that stuff is critically important. But even before that, I think communication is key and it’s all about the expectations, and once we’ve done that, we can really create some incredible results.

So I hope you find that helpful. I hope that gives you something to think about when you’re coming in for your aesthetic treatments. Feel free to chat with me about any of this. And as a reminder I want to let you know that I have another daily, one minute podcast where I look at some of the latest news from around the world in aesthetic medicine. And if you want to check that out, it literally is just about a minute or so each day. And you can access that by searching for the podcast, Aesthetic Medicine Minute, in your favorite podcast player and also on Amazon Alexa, it’s available there too.

Feel free to check out my website, DrTeriFisher.Com, D R T E R I F I S H E R or on Instagram @DrTeriFisher, and I look forward to connecting with you very soon. Have a wonderful week and be well.