Your questions answered!
When do courses start and how will learning be divided between online and practical?
We are starting the programmes on 20 March. We are going to start with the online blend. There is quite a lot of teaching that can be done online, then we will schedule the face-to-face session and hands-on practice sessions very soon after. But we will be incredibly flexible with that; we actually have the ability to do face-to-face as long as we are covid-compliant as this qualifies as medical training. So, we will shift the face-to-face just for safety reasons.
How much do courses cost?
£1500-£3000. They cover the same kind of basics, but the higher levels are obviously more advanced and give you a higher level of skill, knowledge, practice and access to demonstrations, etc. So, we’ve tried to keep it as competitive as possible so that people don’t need to shell out too much to be able to get the benefits of the programme, while at the same time recognising that from our experience and without any reservation whatsoever that people who have been through courses similar to this and like this, they have been able to go on to significantly enhance their earnings.
So basically, you spend £1,500 or £3,000 and you will be making that back quite quickly, in terms of your skills are directly related to the ability for you to be able to earn some more income. And that’s really our focus, to put skills in the hands of real people, not some sort of ephemeral, academic kind of pursuit but it’s really about career and enhancing your income, and we aren’t ashamed of that.
Do the courses offer return on investment?
Yes, definitely. For a practitioner who is high end, a session of one single patient with platelet rich plasma and micro-needling on the scalp, for example – and three sessions is standard protocol for hair restoration – would be around £3,000. It’s a kind of return of investment with only one patient.
Can Level 5 aestheticians attend a Level 7 course?
We are guided by the ethical and moral guidance of the profession. The Health Education England guidelines were formed from a very extensive consultation that went throughout the entire stakeholders of aesthetic medicine in the UK. And as a result, we are not the only people who will decide who can do what; there are also the organisations that we are accredited through and the insurance industry. So, there is an entry criterion and you have to kind of have passed these entry requirements before you are able to apply. These are on the website: www.biam.org.uk/courses
Can I move onto a Level 7 course after I have taken a Level 5 course?
Yes, absolutely. A Level 7 qualification includes the curriculum of Level 5, so it’s a little bit longer so that you can have the advanced technique there. But somebody who has applied and is eligible for a Level 7 qualification will go through the entire curriculum that the Level 5 qualification will include. And then on top of that the advanced and deeper techniques, combinational treatments and different protocol-based curriculum that will characterise the Level 7 qualification.
What do the course assessments entail?
There are two types of assessments; summative and formative. Some would be multiple-choice type questions that verify the comprehension of the programme and some would be a bit freer form to demonstrate the knowledge. But because it’s a Level 5 and a Level 7 it’s not going down the route of some kind of thesis or anything like that. There will be an assessment on the day of the hands-on, the face-to-face elements, just to make sure that people are competent at doing the various bits and pieces that they have learnt on the day. So, they’re not designed to be some kind of super-formal exam situation, there’s multiple-choice questions, observational and formative aspects.
Want to know more?
Explore courses at www.biam.org.uk
Email BIAM on [email protected]
Or phone on +44 (0) 121 345 9847