How Can You Make Your Plastic Surgery Consultation Go Smoothly?

If you're thinking about plastic surgery, I want to give you some hints, some pearls, to make the process great for you and make sure that you get the best possible result and the best possible chemistry with your plastic surgeon. Hi, I'm Dr. Shervin Naderi, a double board certified facial plastic surgeon who's been in practice focusing on the face for almost 25 years.

Now, when you walk into most plastic surgeons' offices, there is a policy. You walk in, you go into a photography room and a photographer takes your pictures. Why are pictures important? For a variety of reasons. We have to be able to look at before and afters, not because we want to show them on Instagram or the website, but because we want to be critical and analytical of our own work.

For almost 25 years, I have examined every single before and after to see what I did that worked great, what I did that needed improvement, what I did that did not work. And that process has allowed me to grow and improve year after year after year. What I do today is very different than what I did five or 10 or 15 years ago, simply because I'm an analyst of my own work and I scrutinize my own work.

So yes, we would love to show before and after pictures. However, practicing in the DC area, having a lot of patients who are in Congress and the Senate, CEOs, the NSA, FBI, CIA, law enforcement, etc., most patients, 99% of them, do not give us photo consent. We respect that. We respect their privacy. We don't post their pictures, but we still need their pictures.

Medically and legally, it's important. You have to be able to see what was there, what was not there. If there's some claim that the patient makes, that you did this to me, and no, it's always been there, you have to be able to show them and prove it to them. So medical legal is important. Regardless, it's a policy. 99% of plastic surgeons will follow that same route. You'll take your pictures and then you have a conversation and a consultation.

Same thing if you do a procedure. Botox, fillers, you have to sign a consent. There are those patients that walk in and say, I don't want to do this. Or if you're coming in for a surgery consultation, some patients occasionally don't want to fill out the paperwork that shows, okay, you've got this medication issue, you've got this allergy, you've got this medical problem, high blood pressure, diabetes, etc.

Listen, if you went to an orthopedic surgeon's office, a cardiologist's office, anywhere else, you'd be doing that same paperwork, whether it's on a computer or on paper. It's important. And as plastic surgeons, we are medical doctors. Same thing.

What am I trying to say? Don't be difficult. 99.9% of patients are not difficult. They follow the procedures, they do a great job. But once in a while a patient comes in and they make a big stink about every single thing. Don't do that, because guess what? That office, the staff, the office manager, the doctor, all of them, they don't want you there if you do that.

If you go to a restaurant and you break the plates left and right, you spill your wine, you're making a big stink and treating the waiter poorly, they don't want you there. So walk in with a positive attitude, follow the instructions. We respect you, please respect us back. Have a good journey.