The working group advocating for a royal commission into the cosmetic surgery industry has significant concerns regarding the cosmetic surgery review initiated by The Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (Ahpra).
Australia’s booming cosmetic surgery industry has enjoyed poor oversight and regulation, putting patients at great risk with some enduring lifelong harm.
While this review provided a starting point, the scope was not broad enough to discover and understand the true scope of the issues surrounding the sector. The recommendations are not strong enough to effectively protect the public. This working group intends to make the case to the government that a royal commission is required.
Whistleblower nurse Justin Nixon said the recommendations were too weak.
“This review is of limited utility when it comes to addressing the substantial risk to the public posed by underqualified and overconfident cosmetic surgeons. The recommendations made as a result of the review are too weak to have any real impact on the cosmetic surgery industry and, if implemented, will ultimately fail to ensure the safety of cosmetic surgery consumers,” Nixon said.
Recent media coverage has exposed the danger of allowing doctors with a basic medical degree or with specialties in non-surgical areas to perform cosmetic surgery without Australian Medical Council accredited surgical training.
Professor Mark Ashton said the recommendations do not fix the broken regulatory system.
“The report released by AHPRA is underwhelming and a profound disappointment. Not only will the proposed changes not fix a regulatory system that is desperately broken, AHPRA’s reintroduction of testimonials will only make a bad system worse,” Ashton said.
“The new AHPRA system of endorsements in Cosmetic surgery to existing non-AMC accredited cosmetic surgeons, effectively means AHPRA will bypass the existing national accreditation mechanisms, and that AHPRA will unilaterally determine what is appropriate surgical training. Cosmetic Surgeons without accredited training in surgery will continue to operate as before, nothing will change. This is an opportunity lost, with this report confirming AHPRA is completely out of touch. “
Barrister Ngaire Watson, spokesperson for the Australian Lawyers Alliance (ALA), said the recommendations do not help patients immediately.
“The ALA is concerned that there is nothing in the report that will improve patient safety immediately. Many recommendations will be useful but they rely on the regulator stepping up enormously, as well as taking swift and strong action even when the spotlight is not on them,” Watson said.
“We hope Ahpra’s acceptance of the recommendations reflects the regulator’s position on the use of testimonials in cosmetic surgery advertising moving forward, but we still need a clear recommendation that the National Law should not be changed. Without legislative backing to keep the ban on testimonials, it will be too easy for false and misleading testimonials to end up in the marketplace.”
Lawyer Dr Margaret Faux, who is also a registered nurse and health regulation expert, said the cosmetic surgery needs to be immediately shut down.
“From the opening paragraph, this report has minimised the seriousness and magnitude of the problems we are facing caused by an out of control cosmetic surgery industry, and trivialised the devastating impact on victims,” Faux said.
“What is required now is immediate action by the federal government to shut down this dangerous industry to avoid more harm, while a royal commission is undertaken.”
Cosmetic surgery industry researcher Michael Fraser said the poor oversight of social media medical advertising has allowed doctors to glamourise cosmetic surgery while omitting their lack of training and qualifications.
“The narrow scope of the review doesn't allow for a proper understanding of the issues in the ecosystem that is the cosmetic surgery sector,” Fraser said.
“To fix a complex problem, we must look at all the moving parts, not only AHPRA, and examine the true extent of how many people have been harmed. Information needs to be compelled from the various regulators, insurers, and other industry participants for a truly independent analysis and only a federal royal commission can do that.”
Published: 1 September 2022