3 Tips to Find a Plastic Surgeon You Can Trust

These days the healthcare industry is full of its ups and downs. Healthcare coverage concerns, and rising malpractice costs have the demand for new, young doctors in constant flux. With so many residents, and med-school graduates awaiting their full certification, the industry is ripe to be flooded with doctors – meaning way more choices for consumers, and prospective patients. However, with so much choice it can be difficult to weed out the “real” from the “fake”, and truly find the right physician for you. While the choices exist across almost all fields of medicine, no industry is more difficult to find a physician in than the field of aesthetics, and plastic surgery.

The issue with the field of plastic surgery is that in this day and age the demand is so vast. And with such a high demand, it spurs many physicians, even those who aren’t board certified, to start offering aesthetic enhancement procedures – a trend that is sadly much more common than you would think. However, using a service like DocChecker patients are able to search through countless physicians in their area and beyond. The benefit of a service like DocChecker lies mainly in the transparency of their profiles, and the intuitiveness of their searches. Unlike other, less thorough services, DocChecker allows you to scour a physician’s profile, and truly get the ins and outs of their practice. You can check out their certifications, sort physicians by their specialties, procedures/treatments they offer, the reason for your visit, and most importantly users are able to read first-hand testimonials about their experiences with these doctors. And more than just having the most thorough and intuitive profiles of any similar service, DocChecker also provides patients with complete contact information for each and every practice, something similar services rarely offer – this allows prospective patients the ability to contact the practice and ask questions or get important information.

While a service like DocChecker offers a number of different advantages for patients, the plastic surgery field still has a lot of factors for patients to consider. Here are 3 tips to finding a plastic surgeon you can truly trust.

• Ask Friends, Family, & Coworkers
One of the best ways to find a qualified plastic surgeon, especially one whose work you admire, is to ask the people closest to you. Plastic surgery has become so popular these days, that it is very likely that someone in your family or circle of friends has gotten some aesthetic enhancement done. As a result, you should ask that person for the name of their doctor or if during their research they came across any good names to consider – providing you a huge leg up on your research. Some of the best connections are made from friends or friends, so don’t be afraid to network. Also ask dermatologists and other doctors whom you trust.
• Reviews Often Tell the Tale
As we previously stated one of the best ways to find a good plastic surgeon is to read reviews and testimonials by actual patients. Services like DocChecker offer tons of certified reviews by actual patients, detailing their experiences with a certain doctor. This will help you paint a picture of how your experience might go, and if patients are generally satisfied with the work of any specific doctor. Reviews will also generally help you decipher certain specialties of the doctor. For instance, some plastic surgeons may specialize in offering procedures like the Brazilian Butt Lift – with patients writing rave reviews about the surgeon’s skills for this procedure and other fat transfers. While other patients have written so-so reviews about other procedures like a breast augmentation. While these mixed reviews may not be ideal, it allows you to see that this doctor offers amazing BBL’s and if that’s what you are looking for, then why not schedule a consultation and get a feel for him in person.
• Check on Qualifications
One of the most alarming trends in the aesthetics industry is the fact that many doctors and medical professionals may not have the qualifications that they claim. This is quite dangerous, as some physicians may claim to be board-certified while they are not. Because of the huge demand for aesthetic procedures, and the money to be made in the industry – many individuals, who may not even be doctors at all, are offering such procedures. This is often where the horror stories of patient deaths, and disfigurement come about – often times we hear tales of pediatricians offering Botox to their patients’ mothers or people injecting plastic into women’s buttocks in a shady walk-up apartment. Be sure to check out your doctors’ qualifications with your state medical board and don’t be afraid to ask or call people out. You are simply protecting yourself and others!

The aesthetics industry can be a tough place to navigate. The most important thing is to do your homework before going into any procedure! No matter how good a deal is, or how wonderful you might look, nothing is worth risking your health or your life. Use services like DocChecker as they can help you navigate through the misinformation and get a truly unbiased look at the landscape, no matter what field of medicine you might be interested in.