For nurses who have or who are contemplating undertaking botox training and have not completed the V300 nurse independent and supplementary prescribing course, an understanding of how to obtain prescription only medicines (POM) such as BOTOX® and Azzalure® for your clients is important.

If you work within the same legal entity as a doctor, dentist or independent nurse prescriber, they can supply you with stock in advance.  If you are self employed and use a prescriber from another company, you are then not within the same legal entity and therefore cannot receive stock in advance.  In the case of wholesale stock, where the product has not been dispensed from a private prescription, VAT becomes payable on the POM, which will have to be factored into the cost to the patient.

If you are self employed the only way to receive a supply of botox is if it is prescribed on a named patient basis.  In this instance, the prescriber will need to undertake an assessment of the patient before the POM is dispensed by a pharmacy.  The law surrounding medicine dispensed on a prescription means that it can only be used on that particular patient, if you multi use the vial you are breaking the law. The only POM that can be multi used is wholesale stock. 

The same rules apply in hospital wards, during a drug round a nurse will administer medication that has been prescribed on a drug kardex or drug chart.  The nurse will take the medicine from the drugs trolley filled with containers that do not have a pharmacy dispensary label on it, this is wholesale stock, which can be dispensed to multiple patients.

If you have completed the independent nurse prescribing course and are self employed you cannot receive wholesale stock and need to write private prescriptions for each client you see.  If however, you work within the same legal entity as a doctor you can be supplied with and prescribe from stock accordingly.  This method of prescribing reduces product wastage as any prescribed botox that is not used for each patient needs to be discarded in an appropriate manner.

After the airing of BBC 3’s Botox Britain, the researcher contacted Cosmetica Training as they perceive us to be a reputable company who will work with them to provide information on important legislation within the industry.  Cosmetica always welcome the opportunity to assist in reliable, informative documentaries to allow information to be imparted to the public which will enable them to make an informed decision on who they go to for their botox injections.

Due to the time scale of the information that was required and the approach that the new documentary was taking, we were unable to assist and suggested alternative contacts.  The theme of the interview changed from “Botox gone wrong” to Nurses face being struck off the register for administering Botox.  The change was due to the apparent lack of coverage of this topic in light of new NMC changes.  We were pleased to inform the researcher that we have not seen any cases of Botox going wrong as our tutors are all highly experienced, all the delegates we train are all medically trained and during the practical sessions are all closely supervised to ensure their injection technique is undertaken safely and accurately.

The 5 Live interview featured a nurse who asked to remain anonymous stating that she had utilised remote prescribing and had to change her practice accordingly, although did not agree with the new NMC guidelines.  Also featured were Sally Taber from the government’s self regulatory body, IHAS and Dr Mark Harrison a remote consultation service provider.  Sally was in favour of the new guidelines and Dr Harrison opposed them, however stated that it will have an impact on his business.

Sally reported how the GMC are to release new guidelines also to clarify its position on remote consultations for botox treatments.  We can only assume currently that they will concur with NMC guidelines from the information Sally was giving.  We were astounded to hear that the nurse thought it was not as safe for a nurse prescriber to administer botox.  The university level V300 qualifications is intense and covers all aspects of law, pharmacology, takes 6 – 8 months to complete and has a pass requirement of 80% rather than the usual 40% pass rate.

Whilst Sally may not have chosen the most appropriate arguement in support of face to face consultations, to ascertain asthma, we agree that face to face consultations are more appropriate as you can see whether the patient has any muscular atrophy, undiagnosed dermatological conditions or infections in the area and will enable the prescriber to make an informed decision on what is the most appropriate dose for the nurse to inject.  It seems to be a little known fact that if the nurses tells the doctor what he/she is going to inject then the nurse is making an illegal prescribing decision.

Whilst the interview highlighted sensationalised concerns, it is true that if a nurse acts outside of NMC guidelines they do face disciplinary action which could include being struck off the register.  A nurses’ condition of registration is to ensure the safety of the public and to work within all the legal and NMC guidelines.

Cosmetica has written to the NMC asking 8 specific questions on non prescribing nurses who administer botox, we will publish their answers when they are received.

Botox injections are becoming more popular and are no longer seen as the treatment that only the stars can afford. With its increasing popularity, is there a sudden downfall in standards associated with this?

The first thing we saw was a rise in the number of Botox parties being offered, beauty therapists entering the industry, closely followed by mobile practitioners and mobile therapists offering treatments in the” comfort” of your own home. District nurses offer medical treatments to patients when necessary however, Botox treatments are a cosmetic medical procedure that seems to be seen as a treatment that does not require a clinical environment to healthy, mobile patients. With this association we are now increasingly seeing the presence of cheap Botox being illegally advertised along with a ridiculous pricing structure.  £40 per area on a voucher website, £75 an area in a barber shop in Liverpool, £200 for 3 areas in Manchester city centre all undertaken by practitioners who have trained to undertake this procedure. Cosmetica charge cost price of £40 for each area to models requesting treatment from delegates in a training environment, however, we do not intend to make a profit margin from these treatments and we would question the qualifications and experience of those offering cheap Botox treatments as part of a business venture.

With everything that is happening within the medical aesthetics industry we were intrigued to hear about a BBC documentary researching for a programme about Botox.  It was quite disturbing to see adverts appearing on forums asking for people aged 18 – 25 who have Botox. This is an age group that obviously do not need these treatments and we feared the route this programme would take would be one showing the industry in a bad light.

There was a young girl who had received poorly injected lip enhancement along with unnecessary Botox injections, a woman who lost her house after choosing to pay for treatments, a lady who had unfortunately encountered problems with permanent lip implants that we now know occur, a beauty therapist who shockingly injected her 15 year old step daughter with Botox and a presenter who sought the advice of a respected aesthetics doctor. The presenter decided to have some time with the doctor away from the cameras and emerged from the clinic room stating it was not a treatment that was for her at this time, yet she had rather suspicious swelling and erythema in an area that is frequently injected with Botox. Of course it is her prerogative to keep whether she had treatment confidentially or not.

It was very disappointing that the presenter chose to not explore the illegal nature of the beauty therapist. No sane prescriber, be it a doctor, dentist or nurse would prescribe Botox for a 15 year old child, so we can only assume that this therapist had Botox that had been prescribed for another patient and used this to treat her step daughter. This action is illegal as it is seen as theft. No consultation would have occurred so the therapist would have decided on the dose that again is illegal. She could face imprisonment or a large fine as making a prescribing decision when you are not legally allowed to is a criminal offence. The legislation regarding prescription only medicine is very clear. If you are not allowed to prescribe anything before undertaking Botox training then this will automatically be the case after completing a Botox course regardless of your initial qualifications. We have contacted the BBC to ascertain who this beauty therapist was, who her prescriber was and why they chose not to cover the illegal aspect of her decision-making. We have yet to hear from them although will update our blog accordingly.

The most pleasing aspect of this documentary was the section with Andy Pickett who highlighted the concerns of non authentic Botox and dermal fillers that are available to purchase over the internet.  Botox is a prescription only medicine and as such needs to be prescribed by a doctor, dentist or independent non medical nurse prescriber.  If such products can be purchased from a website claiming to be a pharmacy then they will not be authentic, sterile or safe products suitable for injection.

The same researchers are recording a further documentary being aired on BBC Radio 5 Live, so it will be interesting to see the course that is taken with this programme.

Following a fire at the server centre where our server is stored we experienced some problems with the website, our emails and our blogs last week.  Unfortunately this included losing the database that all of our blogs are stored on.

We’ve been able to replace the blog content today but alas, not the comments.

The initial stage of our trial training session has been completed and after a few technical issues that have been fully resolved we are ready to issue our delegates with part two.  Part one contained the theory of botulinum toxin type A and part two will conclude the theoretical training by concentrating on the theory behind the practical application of botox administration for cosmetic enhancement.

Part three is the practical aspect of the botox training. After sitting an exam based on part one and part two, the delegates undertake a full day of botox administration.  To test the success of the trial we will be comparing the scores gained from delegates who studied under this trial to those who studied via 100% tutor contact.  Our hypothesis is that the delegates undertaking the trial will have greater theoretical knowledge and a higher exam score than delegates following the normal training route.  Feedback gained from these delegates will ascertain any issues they encountered, which will allow us to make any amendments necessary before we roll out our programme nationally.

It has been 8 days since the announcement of our revolutionary free botox training trial and the demand has been immense.  Our first intake of delegates are due to commence their training shortly so we will be announcing their feedback in March.

If you are a medical professional who wishes to apply then please contact us and we will place your name on our reservation list.  For anyone wishing to have a botox treatment at cost price can book an appointment via our online booking system.

Medical professionals often look into botox training as a way of gaining additional income or as an exit route from the NHS.  Whatever the reason for undertaking botox training as a doctor, dentist or nurse you have to make sure the training matches your needs.

The Future

Some companies only offer combined courses or individual training days which may not suit the majority of  healthcare professionals’ learning needs.  Training has also moved forward and many Universities are offering postgraduate courses via e-learning.

Cosmetica Training have decided to change the face of botox courses by offering a new and unique way of learning.  Before this programme is rolled out nationally we are currently offering this form of botox training free of charge as part of a trial, as long as you book your place before 18th March.   In return for free training, all that we ask is that you complete a feedback form to ascertain how successful you thought the course was and suggest any changes you think would be helpful.

How can you access free botox training?  As long as you have a current NMC, GMC or GDC registration with no disciplinary action recorded you can access free botox training.   You will study the theoretical aspect initially via e-learning with extensive resource material and online assistance.   Following this you will attend a learning centre to sit an exam and see a demonstration by the tutor.  You will then spend a minimum of 4 hours undertaking practical botox administration.  If you wish to spend a full day injecting models you can, you decide on how many models you want to inject to ensure you are 100% competent at botox administration.

Terms and Conditions

There is no catch, no contract, just some terms and conditions, these are:

• you must supply models on the day to inject
• the models pay towards the cost of the treatment (£40 – £50 per area).
• the course must be applied for before 18th March 2011
• you must possess a valid NMC, GMC or GDC registration without conditions applied to your registration
• a feedback form is filled in upon completion of  your training

If you cannot provide models, we can source these for you and all we ask is that you pay for their treatment.  If you are able to supply models for your botox course then you will receive free botox training, no catch, no hidden fees just indepth training from an ethical company that will allow you to gain insurance to be able to administer botox.  After you have completed your botox training session you are not tied into any contract with us.

If you meet our eligibility criteria and wish to take part in this trial please e-mail us at info@cosmeticatrainingcourses.co.uk or call us on 0845 467 7732.

After completing a cosmetic course you need to obtain insurance prior to you treating your first client with botox. It is at this moment you think you are all above board and are covered for medical malpractice in the event of a claim.