Has anyone set up as a botox nurse?

[Botoxbotox]

And would you be kind enough to give me the pros and cons?
I'm considering it but I'm not a prescriber so I imagine that'd be a faff.
I'm aware the lady who does my botox makes a fortune and its tempting.

Are you a qualified medical professional?

@Fritilleries yes I'm a qualified nurse of 15 years.

What gives you the impression she's making a fortune? Have you seen the price of the toxin? And if she's not a prescriber she will have to pay them too

@GreenLunchBox she has just bought a really quite expensive house and has lovely holidays etc, we are quite friendly and I know it's all from earned income from running the botox clinic.
I appreciate there are costs of course, but it still seems quite well renumeration, especially considering you can set your own hours etc to an extent.

No but I know someone who did - she is a qualified nurse who didn't want to get the Covid jab so she left the NHS (this was back when the government was threatening to sack NHS staff who didn't have the jab). She set up doing botox and fillers. She makes more money than she did as a nurse.

Most of the Botox technicians around here are NOT prescribers. They get it from China and complete "health questionnaires" with their clients who believe this is correct.

All it takes is for one injection to go wrong....

It can definitely be lucrative. A friend is a doctor who now does 1 day a wk as a doc & does botox/fillers on the other 4 days.

More money in fillers than botox. No need to do prescriber course for fillers.

Pros:
You can qualify to do botox and fillers in as little as a day (though preferably you should more training!)
You set your own clinic hours and can make good money.
Botox and filler are surprisingly cheap to buy, pretty sure 1ml of lip filler is like 20 quid!

Cons:
Getting started can be expensive, course fees, equipment, setting up an area in your house to do it or renting a chair in a salon.
Insurance is expensive, I think about 6k a year.
You should be available to clients 24 hours in case they have a problem (though you don't have to be, but you should).
Building up a client base can be hard at first, some nurses I know have done the initial training and then given up after less than a year. I think you need to be quite confident and assertive to get started.
Clients can be unhappy or have unrealistic expectations.

@SaggyBlinders thank you! That's exactly the sort of stuff I was hoping to hear.
I totally get what you're saying about fillers, but I wonder if most people want a one stop shop, I certainly do. Although I guess I could become a filler expert and make a niche for myself.

I'm not sure why you'd want to make a living from pumping stuff into insecure people's faces, but maybe I'm just old-fashioned.

Every single bit of this post is depressing.

Lots of people have. Doesn't make them qualified or any good though.

@veronicagoldberg because the NHS has become soul destroying and I am looking for a way out. Have you any goodcareers advice for me instead?
@Nelliephant1 I appreciate that lots of people have, I was hoping to hear from some of them 😀

My neighbour does, not sure of the ins and outs but I know she loves it, makes a lot more money and finds it less stressful and better hours.

I've done some consultancy work for another aspect of 'clinics' in the past and it is true there were a lot of nurses involved. Chatting to one nurse, she said she supplemented her cosmetic work with occasional bank shifts, so that could be an option, this could well have been as a way of maintaining her registration, as well as to earn money.

I have no idea who makes what money and I'm sure some don't make very much, others make a good living or indeed a fortune and it will depend on how good a business person you are and whether you have a good source of clients locally, plus what the competition is.

You should be aware that it appears that regulation in this area is being strengthened so something to investigate further before taking the plunge. This is the area I'm more interested in and in my limited experience not all operators offer a safe good quality service.

But then if that's your aim, increased regulation could well be a good thing, as it might force out some of the less reputable providers, who likely undercut those who aim to follow best practice.

www.gov.uk/government/news/government-to-crack-down-on-unregulated-cosmetic-procedures

It was also well known that some of the apparently successful clinics were actually fronts for money laundering and organised crime etc, so don't take everything at face value. I'm not saying this is the case for your 'botox lady' but it is for some of them.

Surely there are only so many people who want this kind of service? I'd say look out for market saturation tbh.

It's also a sector that could struggle during the cost of living crisis.

People's budgets for non-essentials are being massively squeezed due to the rising cost of food, utilities, petrol etc.

@BarbaraofSeville thank you so much for your reply.

I think the increased regulation would possibly be a positive for someone like me as a registered health professional. I had no idea about the money laundering but have just gone down an Internet worm hole about it, fascinating!

I'm also contemplating another work stream of consulting on another aspect of healthcare, but imagine it to be all consuming for short periods of time....is that the way consultancy has worked for you?

Because of the increasing numbers of women having fillers and Botox the number of complications is increasing leading to more litigation cases. The knock effect is spirally insurance costs. Finding a prescriber is probably going to become more difficult with the new legislation proposed. There is a move towards the prescriber to see the customer face to face, many do it by phone or not at all but as the prescriber are ultimately liable for any problems.
I advise any patients who ask about it ( we have a dentist who provides the service at our practice) not to see anyone unless they are both the provider and the prescriber. Anyone can phone you and pretend they are a doctor or a nurse.
It is such a poorly regulated area of cosmetic medicine. The first time you cock it up and leave someone permanently disfigured will live with you forever. This is where you have to start from. All medics and dentists spend 5+ years studying anatomy and physiology so have a much better basic knowledge of facial anatomy. They have a working knowledge of disease and medication and how it impacts on the use of cosmetic drugs. But most of all they will happily refuse to do treatment if they are not happy to do so.
I work as a dentist, 16 hrs a week and pay 3K a year in indemnity insurance. We pay a further 3k a year to cover public liability and general insurance at the practice. I would have to pay a further 3k a year in indemnity if I did facial cosmetics. So before even starting you are probably looking at 6k+ just in insurance.
Do your research, find out the unit cost of Botox and fillers. How much do you want to earn an hour? How many clients can you see in an hour? Cost of fuel, car insurance, retainer for prescribing profession. Then work out a unit cost. You won’t be seeing 4 clients an hour to start with, maybe one or two a day initially so if you are only clearing a profit of £50 per client it’s not particularly lucrative.
Also you need to register as self employed, keep accurate records and may have to register for VAT. Self assessment is quite complicated when you are working in the health sector, a good accountant can save you thousands and also save you from the horror of a tax investigations.
Sorry to piss on your bonfire but when you have been employed, moving to self employment can be a real nightmare if you are not prepared.

I’ve just checked and Botox and fillers are not VAT exempt and are charged at 20% so that is another cost you would have to add in.

Just checked and we charge £300 for Botox. After overheads and costs it works out at about £80 profit per client depending on the type and amount of Botox used. So after tax it’s between £40-60 per client. To build up clients you may need to promote with discounts. Initially you may only be earning £20 per client but if you are seeing 50-100 clients a week it could be very lucrative. But as a previous pp mentioned, the world and his wife are doing facial cosmetics. Many of the salons use substandard (illegal) products and are not properly insured so can offer at a much lower cost.
one of the big training salons provide Botox and fillers currently not unlicensed in the UK (cheap) that they sell under the counter and the salons decant in to legitimate product containers.
This practice is not only fraudulent but also very dangerous as the product is no longer sterile. All Botox should be in powder form so for anyone having Botox ask to watch them prep the powder. If they arrive with it already made up run for the hills.

I know three midwives who have gone into aesthetics (two are also nurse prescribers) and they are doing very well out of it. Earning more money for better hours. They all started off doing it as a sideline and have progressed into full time aesthetics. One now owns a very swish salon and is raking it in. The other two “freelance” at equally swish beauty salons owned by other people. However, I also have a doctor friend who tried it and didn’t get anywhere…I don’t think she was particularly good at it.

It is becoming a saturated market, unless in an area with an enduring client base that's likely to withstand changing trends then I'd maybe do the course (which is scarily short) and look into trying to do it part time perhaps alongside work, see how you find it and see how it goes. Whilst some will pay more for a HCP to do it, many are getting it done foe the least money possible as it's unaffordable otherwise so not necessarily the selling point you'd assume. It's also a bit late imo to get any sort of advantage over well established businesses for securing people willing to pay £££s.

I will say though, there are a load of opportunities outside of the NHS for nursing that might be worth exploring if aesthetics doesn't seem all it's cracked up to be.

I'm employed and we offer a specialist health and safety consultancy, asthetics is only a very small part of what we do.

But another avenue that may be open to you if you decide not to open a Botox clinic could be an inspector for CQC or the local equivalent if you are in Scotland, Wales etc rather than England.

I'm a nurse and can administer Botox.

As a cost breakdown

it's about £35 per month insurance
around £110 for 10u of toxin
needles, syringes, Adrenalin, etc are between £4-£20 a box
£10 for saline
£30 for prescription

Trying to thing of other costs.

i guess if you're planning to do it as your main job you will need a space, or rent a room within a salon or beauty place. I don't know how much that costs.

people here charge £220-£250 for 3 areas.

as mentioned above, the money is in the fillers because you don't have to pay a prescriber