Understanding patients is key to successful treatment - Dr Nestor Demosthenous

Dr Nestor is an award-winning aesthetics doctor with a clinic in the heart of Edinburgh’s New Town. www.drnestor.co.uk

In a world that has become dominated by social media and body dysmorphia, I believe that as a Cosmetic Doctor I have a responsibility to dissect the thinking of my patients, and this is why I offer a generous 40-minute consultation.

During this time, I can speak frankly and openly to try to understand why the patient sitting in front of me is choosing to have intervention, to ensure that those reasons are valid and are not as a result of an unrealistic vision a patient has of themselves. I really believe that in understanding the patient’s mindset I can use this to positively influence a patient’s aesthetics journey.

For me, I always want to understand the why. In every case, almost without exception, something powerful and visceral has pushed a patient into action. There is always something that has led them into thinking “I don’t like my lines. I need botox” or “I don’t like my jowls, I need filler.” The cornerstone of successful treatment is understanding patients, so once I understand my patient’s reasoning, their “why” as it were, I can treat them with confidence. My fundamental role, prior to treatment, is to understand what this something is. Once I understand it, I can talk the patient through treatment options and their various outcomes to devise a plan that will address and alleviate their issue and make them feel terrific about how they look.

What people feel is 100 per cent accurate, but from my experience what they think isn’t always in line with how they feel. For example, I might receive a visit from a 60 year-old who comes in and wants her jowls taken away because they make her feel like she looks tired. If we break it down, though, you will see that her thought process is inaccurate. She feels like she looks tired, and she is probably faultless in her assessment. But it is not the jowls that are the sole issue. She perhaps has hooded upper eyelids, hollowing underneath the eyes, eyebags, as well as jowling, each of which are signs of tiredness and give a cumulative result of an appearance of tiredness. So, she has read her face correctly but jumped to conclusions that are not wholly correct. This is the surface I need to scratch with every patient – to understand their why.

Once I know the why, I can speak to them and outline to them the steps my team and I can take that will give them the best possible result and ensure they achieve the outcome they want.

My approach to treatment centres on holistically treating the face, rather than focusing on a single feature. I want to celebrate the individual beauty of each of my patients and enhance their facial features so they can become the best version of themselves. I also never want my patients to look as if they have “had work done” rather my intervention will look natural, respecting proportions, angles, and ratios to accentuate natural beauty. My philosophy hinges on understanding what drives the patient and what they feel (i.e., I feel, I look tired, sad etc) rather than focusing on what they want (i.e., I want lip filler, I want to get rid of lines etc). It’s a completely tailored approach. Once I understand how the patient feels, I can start to optimise bespoke journeys for them to achieve a refined and unique outcome, combining injectable treatments with non-invasive technology-based, treatments such as Secret RF.

Dr Nestor Demosthenous is an award-winning aesthetics doctor with a clinic in the heart of Edinburgh' s New Town