Doctors and nurses are not the only regulated professionals working in UK aesthetics. Dentists, dental hygienists and dental therapists, pharmacists, and Health and Care Professions Council registrants including paramedics all appear in this field. Each has a statutory register, each register is public and free, and each answers a slightly different question.
The General Dental Council register
The GDC maintains registers of dentists and of dental care professionals. The second group includes dental hygienists, dental therapists, dental nurses, dental technicians, clinical dental technicians and orthodontic therapists. An entry shows the registrant's name, registration number, the title they are registered in, registration status and any published action.
The title on the entry is the field that carries the most information, because in dentistry the scope of practice attached to each title is defined, and the titles are not interchangeable. A dental nurse and a dentist are both on a GDC register and are not doing the same job. When a clinic describes a team member as being GDC registered without naming the title, ask which title.
- Open
- The General Dental Council register search
olr.gdc-uk.org - Type in
- The registration number if you have it, otherwise the full name. Then read the registered title on the entry, not just the fact of registration.
- A good result looks like
- One entry with a current registration, showing the title the practitioner told you they hold, with no published action against it.
- An ambiguous result looks like
- An entry showing a dental care professional title where you were told you were seeing a dentist, or the reverse. Registration lapsed or expired. Multiple similar names with no number given to you.
- What it does not prove
- That the person may prescribe, that they are trained in aesthetic procedures, or that any premises registration exists for the room you will be treated in.
Dental titles and prescribing
Dentists are appropriate practitioners for the purposes of prescribing prescription only medicines. Dental care professionals are not dentists, and the arrangements that allow them to supply or administer medicines are narrower and structured differently. If a prescription only medicine such as botulinum toxin is involved, the question of who prescribed it does not go away because a dental practice is involved. Ask who prescribed, what their registration is, and when they assessed you.
The GDC also publishes standards for the dental team, and those standards apply to registrants when they are carrying out cosmetic work as well as dentistry. That is useful to you: it means there is a written yardstick against which conduct can be measured if you ever need to complain.
The General Pharmaceutical Council register
The GPhC registers pharmacists and pharmacy technicians in Great Britain, and registers pharmacy premises. Northern Ireland has a separate pharmaceutical regulator, which is a distinction to remember if you are checking a practitioner there.
Two features of the GPhC register are directly relevant to aesthetics. First, it shows whether a pharmacist is annotated as an independent prescriber. Pharmacist independent prescribers are appropriate practitioners and can prescribe prescription only medicines within their competence. Second, the register of premises is a genuine premises register, though it registers pharmacies as pharmacies, not aesthetic clinics as clinics. A registered pharmacy premises is not a registered cosmetic clinic and the two should not be confused.
Where a pharmacist prescriber is involved in an aesthetic service, the same central question applies as anywhere else. Did the prescriber assess you personally before prescribing, and can you name them. A prescriber who has never met you and never spoken to you has not carried out an assessment, whatever paperwork exists.
- Open
- The General Pharmaceutical Council registers
pharmacyregulation.org/registers - Type in
- The registration number or full name of the pharmacist. If a pharmacy premises has been named to you, search that separately in the premises register.
- A good result looks like
- A current registration, and, where the pharmacist has said they will prescribe for you, an independent prescriber annotation visible on the entry.
- An ambiguous result looks like
- A current registration with no prescriber annotation where prescribing has been described to you. A pharmacy premises registration being offered as though it were a clinic registration.
- What it does not prove
- That the pharmacist assessed you, that a valid prescription exists for you, or that the treatment room is registered or inspected by anyone.
- Note
- The GPhC covers Great Britain. Northern Ireland has a separate pharmaceutical regulator.
The Health and Care Professions Council register
The HCPC regulates a group of professions and protects their titles. Paramedics are the group most often encountered in aesthetics, though others appear. An HCPC entry shows the registrant's name, registration number, the profession they are registered in, registration status and any published outcomes.
The HCPC model is title protection. It is an offence to use a protected title, such as paramedic, without registration. What the register therefore proves is precisely that: this person is entitled to use this protected title today. It does not approve any activity outside the profession, and aesthetic injecting is outside all of these professions as they are defined.
Prescribing rights across HCPC professions are not uniform. Some professions include annotations for independent or supplementary prescribing, and others do not. If a practitioner tells you they prescribe, ask which annotation they hold and check it on the entry rather than assuming that a registered professional is automatically a prescriber. The general principle is set out in which treatments legally require a prescriber.
| Regulator | Who is on it | Shows prescribing status | Covers |
|---|---|---|---|
| General Dental Council | Dentists and dental care professionals, by title | Dentists are appropriate practitioners; other titles differ | United Kingdom |
| General Pharmaceutical Council | Pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, pharmacy premises | Yes, independent prescriber annotation | Great Britain |
| Health and Care Professions Council | Fifteen professions including paramedics | Varies by profession, shown as an annotation | United Kingdom |
A framework written by this publication to organise the procedure. It is not a measurement, a guideline or a regulator's classification.
The pattern across all five registers
Once you have used two or three of these registers the pattern becomes obvious, and it is the same pattern every time.
Each register proves a professional status. None of them proves aesthetic competence, because none of them assesses it. Each may show a prescribing annotation, and that annotation determines who may write a prescription but never whether one was properly written for you. None of them says anything about premises, insurance, products or the company taking your money.
That is not a criticism of the registers. They were built to regulate professions, and they do that. It is a description of the shape of the gap, and the gap is where this site lives.
A note on titles you cannot check
Alongside the protected titles there is a wide vocabulary of unprotected ones: aesthetic practitioner, cosmetic practitioner, aesthetician, skin specialist, cosmetic doctor, aesthetic nurse. Some of these are used by people with substantial statutory registration. Some are used by people with none. The words themselves are not regulated and carry no legal weight.
The consequence is practical rather than dramatic. When you read a title, do not try to work out what it means. Ask the two questions that do have checkable answers: which statutory register are you on, and what is your number. If the answer is that there is no statutory registration, that is a lawful answer for a filler treatment on an adult in most of the UK, and it is information you are entitled to have before you decide.