Aesthetic medicine is an exciting option for medical professionals looking to either change specialties or add new services to their practices.
As with any specialty, there are pros and cons to consider. Many factors can influence your decision, including money, lifestyle, and perhaps most importantly, what you enjoy doing.
The decision to change specialties altogether can be even more difficult. It’s easy to view your original specialty as a permanent decision that can’t be altered, but in truth, it’s common for physicians to change their path throughout their careers.
The American Association of Aesthetic Medicine and Surgery (AAAMS) is dedicated to guiding the way for professionals who choose to move or expand into aesthetic medicine. A significant portion of those making the move into aesthetic medicine are OB-GYNs.
Below, we’ll explore gynecology aesthetics and some of the reasons why OB-GYNs are deciding to take this exciting step out of their comfort zones.
Mommy Makeovers
While some women may accept post-pregnancy changes to their bodies as “badges of motherhood,” an increasing number of mothers are no longer willing to accept these changes as unalterable facts of life.
Many of these women are interested in “mommy makeover” treatments, such as the following:
- Stretch mark and other scar treatments
- Skin tightening
- Non-invasive body contouring
- Botox
- Hair removal
- Dermal fillers
Many women exploring these aesthetic options often feel most comfortable discussing them with an OB-GYN with whom they have an established, trusting relationship. In addition to the familiarity and trust of an established relationship, these patients generally believe such treatments to be safer or more efficacious when done by an aesthetic practitioner in an OB-GYN office setting rather than a non-medical setting.
Aesthetic Gynecology
Aesthetic gynecology is another field enjoying an increase in patient interest and demand. Many women find that they want to enhance their genital appearance. Gynecologic aesthetic procedures include the following:
- Labiaplasty: This procedure decreases the size of the labia minora to make it flush with the labia majora.
- Clitoral hoodectomy: This procedure removes extra skin from the tissue that covers and protects the clitoris.
- Vaginoplasty: This procedure repairs or constructs a vagina.
- Hymenoplasty: This procedure creates or repairs a torn hymen.
- G-spot amplification: This procedure increases the G-spot’s size and sensitivity to enhance the female orgasm.
- Labia majora augmentation: This procedure enlarges the labia majora for a youthful appearance.
The rising popularity of these procedures means the medical aesthetics field needs more OB-GYNs with the required aesthetic skills and experience to perform them.
Increased Patient Base
Adding aesthetic services to your OB-GYN practice can lead to increased satisfaction and retention among current patients who might have looked elsewhere for their aesthetic medical needs.
Becoming an aesthetic gynecologist can also help build your patient base as new patients turn to your practice for a more full-service experience. These benefits can offer you a more stable practice and an increased bottom line.
10 Ways to Tell if Aesthetic Medicine for OB-GYNs Is Right for You
Maybe you’ve been playing around with the idea of aesthetic medicine training, but you’re unsure if you should take the plunge. You may not know what to expect or if the courses will be worth the investment. In short, you wonder if jumping feet-first into the world of aesthetic medicine is right for you.
Ultimately, of course, what you choose to do will depend on your needs and interests as well as your comfort with branching out into a new area of treatment. But if you’re considering a change or just feeling the need to diversify your current treatment offerings, aesthetic medicine can be an excellent option for many reasons.
Explore the following 10 factors to tell if aesthetic medicine for OB-GYNs is right for you. The more these considerations resonate with you, the more sure you can be that enrolling in a Botox and dermal filler training course is just the thing to take your career exactly where you want it to go.
1. You Like Working Directly With Patients
If you enjoy direct care and consider yourself a “people person,” you’ll likely love the exciting world of aesthetic medicine. Of all direct-care medical specialties, aesthetics enables you to work with patients in highly personalized, individualized and collaborative ways.
Moreover, it may be the only specialty in which a patient’s return visit is positive, affording you the opportunity to build lasting relationships with them year after year.
2. You Want A Better Work-Life Balance
If you’re a hospital OB-GYN, you’re probably no stranger to stress, long hours, unpredictable schedules and little work-life balance. If these characteristics are a reality for you, entering the medical aesthetics field may be the antidote you’ve been looking for.
The nature of medical aesthetics means your career will be free of the following:
- Long hours
- Unpredictable schedules
- Weekend shifts
- Overwhelming provider-to-patient ratios
- Most of the drawbacks of hospital-based medicine
3. You Want to Explore a New Specialty
If you’re somebody who loves to learn just for learning’s sake or who values the idea of continual personal growth and professional development, medical aesthetics training is for you.
Aesthetics represents a dramatic departure from your established care duties and routines. The opportunity to explore a whole new mode of practice and specialty can be personally inspiring and professionally revitalizing.
4. You Want to Work in an Uplifting Environment
Let’s face it — hospitals are the least uplifting work environment that many people can imagine. Hospitals are invariably cold, clinical and aesthetically uninspiring, even for OBGYNs who love their patients.
But when you work in aesthetic medicine, you can look forward to a wonderfully elevating work environment replete with thoughtfully designed spaces, welcoming energy, pleasant scents and a warm, welcoming ambiance.
5. You Want to Expand Your Skill Set
If you’re somebody who enjoys rounding out their resume and constantly upping their game, you’ll likely love learning to safely and effectively perform aesthetic procedures. With new techniques to master and new products to try, there’s always something to learn.
6. You Want to Expand Your Practice
Becoming an aesthetic OB-GYN is an excellent way to diversify or expand your practice. Aesthetics injectables are incredibly easy to incorporate into your practice. They don’t come with any new overhead or the need to invest in new equipment, and your existing patients represent a ready-made patient population — especially because Botox has a host of non-cosmetic applications for treating everything from headaches to excess sweating to jaw grinding to acne.
7. You Want to Take Advantage of a Hot Market
The market for non-invasive cosmetic procedures is exploding. Between pent-up demand unleashed by the lifting of pandemic lockdowns known as the “zoom boom” and the growing mainstream interest, acceptance, and demand for injectables, aesthetic medicine is an exceptionally hot market.
8. You Want a Fast, Easy and Affordable Way to Change Careers
There is probably no faster, easier, more affordable way to make a career pivot than with aesthetics training. Because aesthetics training builds on your existing skills, you’ve got a head start on the path to success.
You’ll be amazed at how quickly you can learn to safely, effectively and artfully perform Botox and dermal fillers. At AAAMS, we’ve created rigorous and robust aesthetic training courses that accelerate your learning and get you injecting in no time.
9. You Want to Open Your Own Business
If you’ve ever thought about opening your own aesthetics-focused business, aesthetic training is the perfect way to unleash your entrepreneurial spirit.
Whether you dream of opening a full med-spa or a small beauty bar, aesthetic training allows you to open your own aesthetic business with very little educational investment in your new skill. What’s more, you can take Introduction to the Business of Aesthetics, a special course designed to help you understand the business side of running an aesthetics practice.
10. You Want to Add More Creativity to Your Practice
The very name “aesthetic medicine” provides a clue that the specialty is the crossroads of art and science. Creativity and sound technique are equally important, as is your ability to use your imagination and your medical skills.
In aesthetics, bringing your creativity and artist’s eye is desirable and necessary to ensure you can deliver a beautiful outcome for your patients.
How to Know if Aesthetics Training Isn’t Right for You
AAAMS is among the most established organizations in the medical aesthetics industry and the premier, fully-accredited platform for excellence in aesthetics education.
Since 2006, we have trained more than 5,000 students in the art and science of aesthetic medicine. When you’ve spent many years training students from multiple medical specialties and all walks of life, you learn what separates merely proficient aesthetics practitioners from those destined to be great.
Ideally, we only want to train students who are a natural fit for the specialty. This makes for a more positive and productive training environment and dramatically increases the odds that our students will go on to healthy and successful aesthetic medicine careers.
But, as with the acquisition of any new skill and the addition of any new service to your clinical offerings, there’s a lot more to consider than just market forces and the logistics of expanding your patient population.
With that said, if you answer no to the following two questions, aesthetic training probably isn’t for you.
- Are you known for your ability to make people feel comfortable and welcome?
There’s something to be said for bedside manner, especially in aesthetic medicine. Aesthetic treatments qualify as luxury purchases, and your patient clientele will expect much more in the way of hospitality than is customary in most other medical specialties.
Aesthetic medicine is different from any other medical specialty because patients seek your services for cosmetic rather than health reasons. As such, they don’t need to navigate healthcare systems or deal with insurance to receive the desired treatments. This means they can easily access a wide range of options, including competitor aesthetic practices.
If you don’t excel at the hospitality side of aesthetics, you’ll have a hard time enjoying your work, building a thriving practice and retaining your clients. Being a technically masterful injector will only get you so far if you’re not a genuine people person. If you’re more comfortable in administrative or behind-the-scenes roles, aesthetic medicine generally won’t be a good fit for you.
- Are aesthetics important to you in other areas of your life? Are you naturally attracted to disciplines and activities with a strong aesthetic dimension, such as interior or graphic design, architecture, photography, painting, sculpting, crafting or flower gardening?
Aesthetic medicine truly is equal parts art and science. In addition to developing flawless technique, becoming a masterful OB-GYN aesthetic practitioner will depend on refining your capacity to understand and apply principles of proportion, symmetry, and balance to facial anatomy.
This is why our foundational aesthetics course places such an emphasis on introducing you to the Golden Ratio. This ancient mathematical formula is the key to understanding what makes something beautiful, whether it’s a historic building, a work of modern art or a human face.
To be clear, we don’t mean to suggest that if you’re not already cultivated in one of the aesthetic disciplines we just mentioned, you’re not a good fit for aesthetic medicine. We simply mean that if you’re already oriented toward the aesthetic dimension of life, you’ll likely take to aesthetics training like a duck to water.
The short of it is this — if you deeply appreciate beauty in any area of your life, aesthetics will be right up your alley. Alternatively, if you’re somebody who focuses more on how things work rather thanhow they look, aesthetic medicine is probably not for you.
Jump Into Aesthetics Training With AAAMS!
AAAMS is a fully-accredited industry leader that has successfully prepared students for rewarding careers in aesthetic medicine since 2006. With more than 5,000 graduates worldwide, we fuel the success of your aesthetics journey with accessible, engaging and enjoyable courses, accomplished and influential instructors, flexible learning options (virtual and hybrid courses available), and perhaps best of all, our exclusive Aesthetics Network.
Stick around to check out our courses, explore everything the Aesthetics Network has to offer and enroll today. We look forward to training with you!
