How to complete a risk assessment for an aesthetics clinic
If you own or manage an aesthetics clinic, ensuring health & safety in your business must be your top priority. Business owners are responsible for complying with health & safety regulations and keeping staff and customers safe.
In this guide, we'll look at what a risk assessment means for your business, the law around risk assessments for the aesthetics industry, and how to complete a risk assessment for an aesthetics clinic. In an environment where clients are exposed to facials, chemicals, and lasers, it is crucial to have a tailored risk assessment in place.
What is a risk assessment in an aesthetics clinic?
An aesthetics clinic is a type of business that mainly focuses on different non-surgical cosmetic procedures. They are a half-way house between normal beauty treatments provided in salons, and more harsh and intrusive cosmetic surgery procedures, offering treatments such as Botox and fillers, skin rejuvenation therapies, facial and chemical skin peels, laser hair removal and several other such services. With this in mind, in aesthetics clinics, there are a variety of additional risks compared to standard beauty salons, and therefore a tailored risk assessment must be completed.
An aesthetics clinic risk assessment is a document that you use to identify and eliminate the health and safety hazards in your clinic. It establishes the baseline of practice from a compliance perspective and helps identify risk areas that need to be addressed. A properly conducted aesthetics risk assessment will cover both property and treatment hazards, whilst also identifying areas where the practice is compliant, areas where the practice needs to be mindful to remain in compliance, and areas where the practice is not compliant that need to be corrected.
The risk assessment is not only required by law but also helps you recognise specific risks. These are risks that have severe consequences for your business if you are ever subject to a health and safety inspection. A risk assessment for your aesthetics clinic will also help you create policies and procedures to protect your clients and employees.
What are the regulations for aesthetics clinics?
In recent years, the popularity of non-surgical cosmetic procedures has grown tremendously, but the aesthetics industry has not been subject to regulation in the UK. This has left it vulnerable to unregulated practitioners carrying out potentially dangerous procedures, without adequate training or risk assessments for their aesthetics clinic, in place. However, the new Health and Care Act 2022 was recently announced, giving the Government powers to introduce a licensing scheme for aesthetic practitioners in England, in order to clamp down on harm caused by unregulated procedures. Regulation of cosmetic procedures in Scotland is currently under review too. Details of these new licencing schemes are currently being drawn up, although the timeline is yet to be confirmed.
However, high-quality aesthetics clinics that follow best practice ensure their practitioners have relevant qualifications, and are affiliated with industry bodies such as the Hair and Beauty Industry Authority (HABIA), recognised by the Government as the Standard Setting Body (SSB) for the hair, beauty, nails, spa and aesthetic sectors. Many practitioners are registered nurses.
Regardless of a lack of industry regulation, as a business owner and employer, you're required by law to protect your employees and clients from harm, which means you still have legal obligations. Under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, the minimum you must do is:
Identify any hazards that could cause injury or illness in your business
decide how likely it is that someone could be harmed and how seriously
take action to eliminate the hazard, or if this isn't possible, control the risk
This means that anyone administering the procedure should have adequate experience and relevant qualifications, and that all of your staff are appropriately trained to limit any risk of injury.
How to conduct a risk assessment for an aesthetics clinic
The HSE outline five steps that you should take when completing any risk assessment. In an aesthetics clinic, there are additional risks that can emerge, so you’ll need to tailor your plan to take these into account, but follow these steps when completing a risk assessment for your aesthetic clinic to ensure you cover all bases:
Identify the hazards
As an aesthetics clinic owner, first, you need to consider anything on the premises that could be hazardous. You should also consult your clinic staff members to discover any health and safety issues which could be present. It is important to check any products that you use for treatments for warning labels or potential hazards. There are also physical risks such as exposure to electricity, slips, trips, and falls which can be present in any business.
Decide who is at risk and how
You also need to consider who each hazard affects and who could be injured as a result. This could potentially be the employees working in your clinic, temporary visitors such as contractors, or your clients. You should also consider the types of injuries or health complications that could occur from exposure to each hazard when undertaking aesthetic procedures.
Evaluate the risks and take action
In this stage, you need to evaluate the severity and likelihood of each hazard. You should also consider any controls already in place to manage the risks, and also what can be done to reduce risks and prevent incidents in the clinic from happening. Examples of actions you could take are using newer or safer equipment to carry out procedures, avoiding harmful chemicals, and providing health and safety training for all your aesthetic practitioners and clinic staff.
Record your findings
The purpose of recording the findings of your risk assessment is so that you can use and review the assessment moving forward. It's always good practice to pin the risk assessment somewhere clearly visible within the clinic so that all your employees can see it and refer to it regularly.
Review regularly
You should review your risk assessment on a regular basis and update it if necessary. There's no specific period for this. However, you should evaluate your aesthetics clinic risk assessments at least every year.
Potential risks and hazards in an aesthetics clinic
Here are some examples of hazards that may be found in an aesthetics clinic:
Facial
Hazard: Allergic reaction, the chance of infection
Persons at risk: Client, practitioner
Control: Test patch 48 hours before treatment, staff regularly wash hands.
Chemical peel
Hazard: Chance of infection, injury
Persons at risk: Client
Control: Check the medical history of the client, staff regularly wash hands and maintain equipment.
Botox/filler
Hazard: Chance of infection, injury, bad reaction to the procedure
Persons at risk: Client
Control: Safe disposal of needles, instructions on aftercare provided, only fully qualified practitioners used.
Laser hair removal
Hazard: Burns, the chance of infection, injury
Persons at risk: Client, staff
Control: Protective equipment provided, instructions on aftercare provided, only fully qualified practitioners used.
When completing the risk assessment for your aesthetics clinic, you need to consider the additional risks posed by more invasive treatments offered. Serious harm could occur if practitioners who administer procedures such as Botox or laser hair removal do not have the relevant qualifications and aren’t adequately trained, so staff training is a crucial part of your risk assessment.
Once completed, any discovered hazards in your aesthetics clinic should be fixed and changes made to reduce the risk of injury to staff and clients. The risk assessment also needs to be kept current with any changes that occur in the aesthetics clinic. It should be reviewed annually to make sure that your safety measures are kept up to date. The overall responsibility of a risk assessment for aesthetics always falls to the business owner.
We hope this information has been helpful and will help you when completing a risk assessment for your aesthetics clinic. Health and safety can be stressful, but Crysp is here to help. We have advisers on hand, and our compliance software can help you digitise your paperwork and simplify processes to take the stress out of your health & safety obligations, especially if you operate over multiple sites.
Why not contact Crysp for a chat about your risk assessment, and other health and safety issues specific to the aesthetics industry, today?