Dealing with Perceived Patient Complications

Complications happen.

If you are not experiencing complications as an aesthetic provider, you are not performing enough procedures.

It’s a simple fact.

Some of those complications are very real and I will address those another day, but today I want to speak to the matter of perceived complications. The times when there is nothing that goes wrong but the patient is still unhappy with the outcome.

Sometimes it seems as if everything goes perfectly right. I listen to what the patient is asking for. I educate the patient on what they need. The procedure goes off without a hitch. The patient signs off on the photo consent and the photos go up on the website and social media to be proudly displayed for other patients to know they too can have those same results if only they visit my office and learn what I have to offer them. A few weeks or months pass by and the patient returns and complains they see no results. The same results I was so incredibly proud of are compared side by side, but what I see, and what the patient sees are simply not perceived to be the same.

There is a touchdown, a homerun. You created a Monet.

But from the patient’s perspective, there is no change. How can this be?

I have all of the objective criteria and measurements for  facial analysis and body sculpting but the bottom line is, if the patient is not happy with their results, at the end of the day, how can we as providers come to terms with this?

Back in my early days of practicing aesthetic medicine all alone, I had no one to turn to and ask for a second opinion. If it was a true complication, I followed the algorithm and if I was still struggling with a patient issue, I always checked my ego and referred out to someone with greyer hair (or no hair in some cases) to get a second opinion. The patient always comes first. And it was the same with perceived complications.

But more often that not, I found myself blaming….well, me. Certainly I must have done something wrong. I must be to blame for achieving less than perfection.

As I began to age in years and wisdom, I realized that sometimes I may never please everyone….no matter how great my work is. There may be other issues at play I am not even aware of that precede my patient’s journey into aesthetic medicine.

Though we may attempt to modify the outside, we cannot always rectify the inside with a laser procedure or a syringe of filler.

It's how we respond to perceived complications that can make all the difference. Reassurance with compassion will make us the best providers we can be.

Complications happen.

It’s a simple fact.