How to choose a FRACS plastic surgeon in Sydney

Sydney is oversupplied with rooms that photograph like hotels and undersupplied with patients who have checked a register. This essay is a method. It will not name a favourite. Naming a favourite would make us a brochure with better type.

Start with the public register

Search the person on AHPRA. Read the type of registration. Specialist plastic surgeon is a sentence. A long list of short courses is another sentence. If the website implies a fellowship the register does not show, believe the register.

The Royal Australasian College of Surgeons and the Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons are places to understand training, not to outsource your judgement.

Then ask about this operation

A specialist can still be the wrong specialist for this list. How many primary augmentations, lifts, or revisions do they do in a year? Where? Who anaesthetises? What is their revision rate, even as a humble estimate? A person who answers with a joke is telling you they do not measure.

If your chest is tuberous or markedly asymmetric, ask for that case-mix specifically.

Hospitals, not scents

Admitting rights at a licensed hospital you would accept at midnight matter more than orchids. Day facilities can be appropriate for straightforward cases. They are not all equal. Ask what happens after hours. Ask how far you will live from that door in the first 48 hours. A Southern Highlands recovery cottage is not a plan if your surgeon retrieves in the east.

Two consults are a method, not indecision

See two people if you can afford the fees. Take the same consult checklist. Compare plans, not vibes. If the plans violently disagree, see a third, or ask each to explain the other plan without contempt.

Contempt is useful information.

Photographs, used as evidence

Ask to see results of bodies like yours, including scars at a year, including a result that needed revision. Lighting should be honest. If every photograph is the same tanned, six-week, arms-down pose, you are in a studio.

AHPRA’s rules exist because photographs are advertising. Treat them as advertising even when they are also information.

Money last

Once two surgeons are both acceptable, cost can break a tie. It should not be the first filter. A cheap incomplete quote is an expensive way to meet a hospital’s accounts department.

What we will not do

We will not publish a top ten. We will not take a referral fee. We will not pretend a long-form journal knows the theatre habits of every list in New South Wales. We will tell you to use the register, the hospital, the second opinion, and your notes.

If you want the questions to carry into the second visit, take questions before you book. If you are considering leaving the country to save money, read medical tourism before you book a flight.

The surgeon you want is a little boring: registered, specific, reachable, and more interested in your fold than in your following.

A note on “I just clicked with them”

Rapport is not nothing. You will be undressed, sore, and dependent on their after-hours manner. Rapport that survives a hard question is useful. Rapport that requires you not to ask the hard question is a spell. Break it in the room, while you can still walk out.

If two people are equally careful and you like one more, choose the one you like. That is allowed. It is the last filter, not the first.

Geography is not a credential, but it is a logistics fact

A brilliant surgeon an hour from your bed on night two is a different proposition to a careful surgeon twenty minutes away. Complications are local. Choose a reachable hospital. Stay in the city for the first nights if you usually live far. This is not glamour. It is retrieval.

Memberships, conferences and the alphabet after a name

Extra letters can mean real training. They can also mean a paid society. Ask what the letter required: examination, logbook, or a form. Then return to the register and the case-mix. An honest FRACS (Plast) with a modest Instagram and a clear hospital is a stronger object than a decorated shopfront with a vague title.

Take a friend who is not afraid to be disliked. Charm is easier to resist in pairs.

A closing note from this desk

Register first, case-mix second, hospital third, rapport last. Instagram is not a column. Geography is a column because complications are local. See two people if you can. Take a friend who will ask the ugly question.

We will not publish a top ten. We will not take a fee. We will tell you that a slightly boring, reachable FRACS (Plast) with admitting rights you respect is the object. Charm that forbids questions is a spell. Break it while you can still walk out.

Reviews, forums and the unreliability of charm at scale

Online reviews are advertising by another name, even when they are sincere. They select for people who had a feeling. They do not select for six-year pockets. Use them as weather, not as climate.

If a rooms replies to every moderate review with a legal tone, notice. If a rooms has no reviews because they do not farm them, notice that too. Then go back to the register and the hospital. Weather passes. Climate is the list.

If two consults agree on the plan and the hospital, you may stop shopping. Endless consults are sometimes anxiety in a respectable coat. Two careful opinions and a sleep are a method. A sixth brochure is not.

If they disagree, do not average the cc. Ask each to explain the other plan without contempt. Contempt is useful. So is a third opinion when the disagreement is about a lift you can see with your own eyes. Eyes plus two specialists is enough to decide.

Ask where their complications go. A name of a hospital you respect is an answer. A shrug is an answer of another kind. Then ask how they measure their own revisions. People who count are easier to trust than people who only remember their favourite afternoon.