Considering lip enhancement comes with plenty of questions, particularly if you have never had an aesthetic treatment before. Most people arrive at a first appointment not entirely sure what they are walking into.
At Enrich Aesthetics in Wangi Wangi, your first appointment is about assessment and consultation. It is not about automatically proceeding with a treatment.
My role as a Registered Nurse is to understand your goals, assess your individual features and determine whether a treatment is appropriate for you at all. Sometimes the most useful thing I can do at that appointment is explain why the answer is no.
What happens during your first consultation?
Your appointment begins with a conversation.
I will ask what has prompted you to book, what you would like to achieve, and what concerns you may have about your lips or your overall appearance.
I will also take a relevant medical and treatment history. That includes previous cosmetic procedures, current medications, allergies and any other factors that may affect whether a treatment is suitable for you.
I will then assess your lips and the surrounding facial features, including shape, proportion, symmetry, and how the lips relate to the rest of your face.
The aim is to build an individualised understanding of what you are hoping to achieve, rather than working from a standard approach applied to everybody.
What are we actually assessing?
Lip shape and volume do not exist in isolation.
I consider the relationship between the lips, the chin, the jawline and the other features of the face, as well as any natural asymmetries and the overall proportions of your face. Almost everyone has some degree of natural asymmetry, and noticing it for the first time in a mirror at a consultation can be confronting if nobody has explained that in advance.
I will also discuss your expectations and what may realistically be achievable.
Importantly, more volume is not necessarily a better outcome. For some people, maintaining their existing natural proportions is the more appropriate path.
More volume is not necessarily a better outcome.
What about aftercare?
If you decide to proceed following your consultation and any required consent process, you will receive aftercare information relevant to the treatment actually undertaken.
Generally, that covers understanding what to expect afterwards, appropriate care, activities that may need to be avoided temporarily, and which changes or concerns should prompt you to contact the clinic or seek medical advice.
Specific advice will always depend on the treatment and on your individual circumstances, which is why it is given to you directly rather than published as a general list. Anything you read online about aftercare is a poor substitute for instructions written for the treatment you actually had.
Why is the consultation a separate decision?
A consultation does not commit you to a treatment.
I believe you should have the opportunity to understand the proposed treatment, its potential benefits and risks, the alternatives available to you and its limitations, before you make a decision.
As a Registered Nurse, I practise within the professional standards and regulatory requirements of AHPRA and the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia, with informed consent and patient safety central to the process. Cosmetic procedures and their advertising must also comply with applicable Therapeutic Goods Administration requirements, which is why this page discusses assessment rather than naming particular products.
That means there should never be pressure to proceed simply because you have made an appointment.
You can have a consultation, ask questions, receive professional advice, and decide not to have a treatment.
What a consultation is not
It is worth being clear about the things a first appointment is not, because the assumptions people arrive with are fairly consistent.
It is not a sales appointment. I am not working from a list of things I would like to sell you, and there is no version of this where a particular outcome has been decided before I have looked at your face.
It is not a commitment. Booking an assessment does not put you on a path you then have to talk your way out of.
It is not a quote. Suitability comes first, and questions about what is appropriate for you cannot be answered before you have been assessed in person.
And it is not a substitute for time. If you are unsure, being unsure is a perfectly good reason to leave without a decision and think about it.
Questions worth asking at your appointment
You are allowed to ask as many questions as you like, and the better ones tend to be about the process rather than the product.
- What have you noticed about my facial proportions that I might not have?
- What would you expect to change, and what would you expect to stay the same?
- What are the limitations of what is being proposed?
- What are the alternatives, including doing nothing for now?
- What would make you say this is not appropriate for me?
- What does the consent process involve, and when does it happen?
- What would a review appointment look like, and when would it be?
If a practitioner is reluctant to answer any of those, that is useful information in itself.
What to bring, and what to expect logistically
Nothing is mandatory, but the assessment is more accurate when you can tell me:
- What medications you currently take, including anything recently started or stopped
- Any known allergies
- Details of previous cosmetic treatments, roughly when they were done, and how you felt about the outcome
- Any questions you have written down beforehand
The clinic is at 22 French Rd, Wangi Wangi, on the western side of Lake Macquarie. There is parking in the driveway at the front or on the street, and parking details are sent through with your appointment confirmation the day before. Appointments run 9am to 5pm Monday to Saturday, closing at 3pm on Thursdays. The clinic is appointment-only rather than a walk-in space.
Wangi Wangi sits out on its own peninsula, so most people are driving in deliberately rather than passing by. Clients travel from Toronto, Rathmines, Coal Point, Kilaben Bay, Bonnells Bay, Fassifern and Morisset, and from further around the lake at Warners Bay, Speers Point and Belmont, as well as from Newcastle. If you are coming from the eastern side, allow a little more time than the map suggests, particularly on a weekend when the lake road is busy.
Enquiries sent through the website are answered within 24 hours.
If you are researching more broadly first, the guide to volume loss in the cheeks and jawline covers how facial structure changes over time, and the volumising treatments page explains how consultations at the clinic are structured.
What a good consultation should give you
At Enrich, I believe a good cosmetic consultation provides three things: an honest assessment, realistic expectations, and an informed choice.
If you leave with a clear understanding of your own face and a decision that is genuinely yours, the appointment has done its job, whether or not you go any further.
That is a deliberately unglamorous definition of a good outcome. It is also the one worth holding a clinic to. An assessment that ends in a considered no is a better piece of care than a treatment that was never properly discussed, and if a first appointment leaves you with more clarity than pressure, you have found the right sort of practitioner.
