This is the single most important question you can ask — and the most frequently glossed over by training academies that put experienced clinicians on their marketing materials but use less qualified trainers in the room on the day.

The person teaching you injectable technique is the person whose clinical judgment, anatomical knowledge, and teaching skill determines whether you leave the course ready to practise safely. The difference between a KOL with a clinical doctorate who has performed thousands of treatments and a recently qualified aesthetician who has done a train-the-trainer course is significant — and it will be apparent the first time you face a complex patient case without a textbook answer.

The number of delegates in a room directly determines how much hands-on time each person gets. This is not a matter of preference — it is a matter of clinical safety. A practitioner who has watched a procedure demonstrated but had limited supervised practice is not adequately prepared.

A course of 15 people in an 8-hour day gives each delegate approximately 30 minutes of trainer attention. A course of 4 people gives each delegate 2 hours. That is a fourfold difference in the quality of supervised practice — and it is reflected directly in how confident and competent you feel treating your first patient.

Many academies market “intimate” or “small group” courses and fill them with 12–20 delegates. Ask specifically: what is the maximum number of delegates? And is that maximum guaranteed in writing?

The training environment shapes what you learn in ways that are easy to underestimate. If you train in a hotel conference room, you learn to inject in a hotel conference room. The lighting, the positioning, the workflow, the instruments — all of it is different from the clinical environment you will practise in.

Training in an active clinical practice means learning in the environment where aesthetic medicine is actually delivered. The clinical couch. The proper lighting. The clinical hygiene standards. The patient journey from consultation through to aftercare. The transition from training day to your first patient appointment is significantly shorter when your training environment matches your practice environment.

Ask for the full address — not just the city. Verify it on Google Maps. Check whether it is a genuine clinical space or a rented meeting room.

There is no substitute for injecting a real person under direct supervision. Mannequins, synthetic skin pads, and oranges give you a basic familiarity with how a syringe works. They do not prepare you for the tissue resistance of a real face, the patient conversation that happens during treatment, the visual assessment of a result in real time, or the management of a patient who moves, bleeds, or bruises unexpectedly.

“Hands-on” means different things at different academies. At some it means watching a demonstration and practising on artificial skin. At others it means injecting live models under the direct supervision of a trainer who observes every injection point, provides immediate feedback, and corrects your technique in real time. These are not equivalent experiences.

CPD (Continuing Professional Development) accreditation is the standard by which your training is recognised by your professional regulator, your indemnity insurer, and the patients and employers who will want to see evidence of your qualifications. A course that is not CPD accredited may not be accepted by your insurer as evidence of competence — meaning it could affect your coverage for the treatments you trained in.

However, not all CPD accreditation is equal. Some CPD bodies are well-established and their accreditation is widely recognised. Others are essentially self-certification. Ask which CPD body has accredited the course and what their assessment process involves. A rigorous CPD body reviews course content, trainer credentials, and clinical standards before awarding accreditation.

This question trips up more training academies than any other — because many do not discuss product regulation at all. The products used in injectable aesthetic training must be CE marked as medical devices specifically for intradermal injectable use. A product that is classified as a cosmetic — even if it comes in an injectable-looking vial — has not been assessed for injection safety, sterility, or tissue compatibility.

If you are trained using a cosmetically classified product and then use the same product on patients, your indemnity insurance may not cover you. The regulatory distinction between CE marked medical devices and cosmetic products is not a technicality — it has real clinical, legal, and financial consequences.

Ask the academy to name the specific products used in training and confirm their CE marking status for injectable use. A good academy will answer immediately and specifically. An academy that fumbles this question is giving you important information about the quality of their regulatory knowledge.

Aesthetic medicine is not a static field. New evidence emerges. Techniques evolve. Products are updated. Regulatory requirements change. A course manual written in 2019 and unchanged since may be teaching techniques that have since been superseded, citing studies that have since been contradicted, or describing a regulatory environment that no longer exists.

The best training academies update their course content annually — incorporating the latest published evidence, the most current clinical guidelines, and the regulatory changes that affect practitioners daily. Ask specifically when the course content was last reviewed and what triggered the update. The answer tells you a great deal about how seriously the academy takes clinical education as opposed to just course delivery.

Your most difficult clinical moments will not happen during the training course. They will happen three weeks later, when you are alone with a patient who has an unexpected reaction, a concern you have not seen before, or a result that is not what either of you expected. What happens at that moment is determined by your training — and by whether you have anyone you can call.

Most training academies provide no post-course support whatsoever. The certificate is issued, the feedback form is completed, and you are on your own. This is not just commercially disappointing — it is clinically problematic. Practitioners without access to post-course guidance are more likely to make errors they could have avoided, and less likely to develop their skills beyond the initial training day.

Published testimonials on a training website are curated — inevitably showing only the most positive feedback. Speaking directly with a practitioner who has completed the course gives you unfiltered insight into the actual experience: was the day well structured? Did they feel ready to treat patients afterwards? Was the trainer genuinely expert? Did the post-course support materialise?

A confident, reputable academy will be delighted to connect you with former delegates. An academy that declines, hedges, or makes this difficult is not giving you a reason to trust their marketing materials more — it is giving you a reason to trust them less.

Alternatively, search for the academy name and “reviews” independently. Check Google reviews, Trustpilot, and aesthetic practitioner forums. Look for specific, detailed reviews rather than brief generic praise — specificity is the hallmark of a genuine review.

This question is rarely asked and almost always worth asking. Aesthetic training courses are expensive — typically £300–1,000 per day. Life happens: illness, clinical commitments, family emergencies. Knowing in advance exactly what the financial consequences of cancellation or rescheduling are allows you to make an informed decision about risk.

Equally important is the academy’s cancellation policy. Some training courses — particularly those with very small group sizes — are occasionally cancelled when insufficient delegates have booked. If a training academy cancels your course at short notice, you need to know whether your deposit is refunded, whether you can reschedule without penalty, and what compensation (if any) is provided for your costs.