‘Explosion’ in the number of uninsured practitioners leaves injured consumers with no hope of receiving compensation
CONSUMERS who have suffered “horrific” injuries including permanent facial disfigurement, scarring and burns as a result of botched cosmetic treatment are being left with no hope of compensation due to an “explosion” in uninsured practitioners, a leading lawyer has said.
Jennifer Wallace, a partner at Thompsons Solicitors who has specialised for more than a decade in personal injury claims involving the hair and beauty industry, said her caseload has soared from a couple of claims in 2012 to roughly 200 enquiries a year.
Clients are “shocked” to discover they often have no prospect of damages despite clear evidence of serious harm and negligence, she added.
Ms Wallace said: “It’s really upsetting to say to people ‘I know you have a case here, I know there is liability, and I know you’ve been left with a horrific injury, but unfortunately I can’t do anything about it because there is no way I can get money out of this person’.
“I’ve had somebody in a fillers case where they had injected into a nerve and the client had been left with a Bell’s palsytype injury - there was permanent deformity of the face and they were hospitalised.
“The practitioner was a beauty therapist who had put on her website that she was insured when she wasn’t.
“I also had a lady with horrific injuries from a fibroblast facial [a plasma energybased laser used to tighten skin].
“She had permanent scarring that no amount of make up could camouflage but in that case the clinic was flouting the
terms and conditions of its insurance.
“She most definitely had post-traumatic stress from that treatment, but there was nothing I could do.”
In Scotland, independent clinics run by healthcare practitioners such as doctors, dentists and nurses are regulated by Healthcare Improvement Scotland.
But there is nothing legally to stop non-healthcare professionals providing cosmetic treatments including Botox, filler injections, and laser treatments in premises such as beauty salons, hairdressers, or in their own homes without any regulation and potentially little training.
Ms Wallace said that she had handled one case where a practitioner fled to the country to avoid paying out in a claim where a 21-year-old had gone bald as a result of burns to her scalp after bleach was left on her hair too long, and another where a woman was hospitalised after teeth whitening went wrong.
She said: “It’s a criminal offence for anyone other than a dentist to perform teeth whitening, but there was a spell of cases where people were being prosecuted for doing teeth whitening in places like beauty salons.
“I had a lady who went to a woman’s house, which is obviously not a very sterile environment, and she used a product that had 30% bleach in it.
“The regulation limit is something like 6%. This woman went into an allergic reaction and was hospitalised on an IV drip for a week.
“The hospital was phoning her asking ‘what have you given this patient because we need to treat her’, and she was very standoffish, very defensive.”
The Herald has also heard of cases where patients have been harmed but are too scared to speak out - even anonymously - after being threatened by rogue operators.
“I’ve had a couple of cases where the practitioner has associations with crime and the client is frightened to step forward and say anything,” said Ms Wallace.
In most cases, however, victims are simply “mortified” - or dismissed.
She said: “It is an absolute struggle with people who are not regulated because they often don’t engage.
“They won’t have insurance and they will just ignore correspondence.
“People feel embarrassed. In my experience of dealing with clients who go to the NHS, they often feel like there’s an attitude of ‘you brought this on yourself’.”
Claire said she wants to make other people aware of the dangers.
The 49-year-old was left with a severe rash covering her face and chest after undergoing a microneedling procedure at a clinic in Aberdeenshire.
The non-surgical cosmetic treatment uses a cluster of 36 tiny needles to puncture the skin in order to stimulate the production of collagen and elastin, helping to reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles.
Claire was alarmed when she began experiencing pain during the procedure and asked the practitioner to stop, but they carried on.
Swollen and scarlet marks remained visible on her skin one month later and a year on she is still paying for private treatment at another clinic to heal the damage.
She said: “I went for this treatment thinking it would improve my skin. Instead, I have been left covered with marks that I can still see today.
“I am self-conscious about these marks on my face and chest.
“They are an ongoing reminder of what that practitioner, who I trusted to perform the procedure safely, did to me.”
Ms Wallace said that when she first began handling cosmetic-related cases a decade ago, roughly 70% involved non-healthcare practitioners and 30% healthcare professionals.
Today, she said the balance is “more like 60-40” due to a growing awareness that claims against regulated clinics - which carry insurance - are much more likely to be successful. Nonetheless, she said even winning these claims can be “an uphill struggle” as the vast majority of doctors, dentists, and other healthcare professionals deny liability.
In her most successful case to date, Ms Wallace secured £85,000 in damages for a woman who developed a vascular occlusion - a blocked blood vessel following lip filler injections carried out by an aesthetic nurse.
With the popularity of non-surgical cosmetic procedures soaring in Scotland, Ms Wallace urges consumers to use “qualified, experienced, insured” practitioners and warned that some clinics are falsely claiming to be regulated by
HIS. The watchdog’s website has a search function where the public can double check whether clinics are registered.