All healthcare practitioners working in cosmetic practice have a professional duty to report complications caused by prescription medicines and medical devices, which include dermal fillers. The Nursing and Midwifery Council states ‘encourage a learning culture by reporting adverse incidents that lead to harm, as well as near misses.’1 The General Medical Council and General Dental Council also have similar statements in their guidelines.2,3 Reporting complications provides many benefits, including identifying issues that may not have previously been known about, providing an early warning system, identifying trends, product safety and counterfeit products, enabling closer scrutiny of a medicine or a device, further research conducted by the manufacturer and experts and ultimately patient safety.4
When working in isolation in private cosmetic practice, it is not always obvious what needs to be reported and where it should be reported to. It is also important to state that an organisation or…
