How can I find the best doctor in my area for fillers and other skin care?

My question is how to find the best Dr. in my area for filllers, skin care etc? I am very scared of going to someone that is not experienced. Thanks so much Sheri

This is a good question because it’s not as simple as it sounds. And……the consequences of choosing the wrong person can be annoying at best and permanently disfiguring in the fortunately rare worst cases.

You would think just making an appointment with the doctor and then asking directly would solve the problem right? Or just asking her/his staff on the phone. Unfortunately most of the time a doctor’s staff won’t tell you if the doctor is inexperienced at something or lacks training in that area. And the doctor sometimes – well how can I put this – doesn’t know what he/she doesn’t know. So they may think they are good at something, but maybe others wouldn’t agree with that. Self-assessment is a tough area for all of us. Having said that, here’s what you can do:

Ways to find a qualified doctor to perform your fillers:

  1. Look at the resource guide – U.S. and international –  on this site for your area. It’s not perfect or kept completely up to date but the dermatologists are board certified and attend educational meetings regularly.
  2. Go to the AAD.org (dermatology board certification) to make sure the doctor you’re considering is actually a dermatologist and board certified. Sadly there are plenty of doctors in the U.S. doing this work who are not dermatologists who’s websites and marketing make it look like they are. Often they are unhappy ER doctors, anesthesiologists, primary care doctors and ObGyns who just don’t like their speciality any more.
  3. Ask your friends whom you think looks good who they see, but they may not necessarily be honest.   One way to ask is to say something like, “Do you have a good dermatologist you could recommend to me.” Then look and see if she/he does aesthetic work as well as medical derm.
  4. Avoid any doctor who advertises. Good dermatologists are busy and don’t need to advertise, except by word of mouth.
  5. Looking on the web is easy but may not give you great information. Just about anyone now can pay someone to put up a good website. Look for things like the dermatology board certification (not just “Board Certified”) The real question on this is …..board certified in what?? Look for the number of years in the community they’ve been in practice.
  6.  Yelp is legalized blackmail for small businesses in my opinion. They will post and keep up good reviews for doctors that pay them monthly fees and take them down for doctors who don’t. We choose to ignore them pretty much completely. There are also well known Yelp consumers who visit doctors and then threaten bad reviews, if they don’t get special treatment of some kind.
  7. Try to figure out how many years the doctor has been injecting fillers and Botox/Dysport. A good question on this is “How many years have you been injecting Juvederm.”  If the answer is many years, then ask “like 2-5, or 5-10, 10-20?” A good doctor shouldn’t be insulted by that question.

Again, it may be difficult to verify the information given.

Hope this helps,  Dr. I

Dr. Brandith Irwin, MD

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Hi, I’m Dr. Irwin. I believe that consumers deserve a medically trained and unbiased skin care advocate.

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