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SMME #425 Scope of Practice, State Regulations, and Industry Advocacy with Susanne Schmaling
00:39:08
Scope of Practice, State Regulations, and Industry Advocacy with Susanne Schmaling
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- [00:00]
Daniela Warner
Welcome to Spa Marketing Made Easy, a podcast for spa owners who want to step up their leadership and business skills and step into the role as spa CEO. I'm your host, Daniela Warner, CEO of Atto Aesthetics and founder of the Growth Factor Framework program where we teach, coach and guide spa owners in scaling their spas to the next level of growth and unlocking freedom in their life and their business. I'm so glad you're here now. Now let's dive into the show.
- [00:31]
Hey friends, Daniela here and welcome to the Spa Marketing Made Easy podcast. So this episode, this was one that we actually planned to air later in the month, but with everything that's going on in the state of Texas around scope of Practice, we really wanted to get this moved up to today to make sure that it was given the awareness that we're getting the word out around some some of these sweeping changes that are happening or attempting to happen in the various states. So I have a guest, Suzanne Schmeling, and shout out to Misty. So Misty is one of our longtime clients. Hi Misty. Love you girl. And she is somebody who I consider a friend. She shared an article that Suzanne wrote in Skin Inc. And was like, hey, this lady would be a great guest on the podcast. I agreed. I read her article. She's obviously very intelligent, very passionate about our industry, doing a lot of work to help protect scope of practice in a smart way, in a way that makes sense. So we got her on the show and she really is doing a lot to highlight this process of how scope of practice things are changed. So I'm going to do just a quick read of her bio and then we'll get right into that interview. My call to action to you is make sure sure that after this episode you go to your board, your state board and make sure that you're getting notifications around legislation that is going through trying to be passed in your state. It's extremely, extremely important. And if you don't know what's happening in Texas, listen to the episode. It's a big deal. Okay, so Suzanne Schmehling is a visionary leader in the aesthetics industry with over three decades of experience as a practitioner educator, author and advocate. As founder of the Aesthetics Council, she champions professional standards, skills education and legislative representation for estheticians nationwide. Her expertise is in clinical skin care and curriculum development, has shaped educational frameworks across the industry, empowering practitioners with science based approaches to skin health. Most recently, Schmeling founded Peruvia Skincare, an innovative AI beauty tech company with meaningful employment opportunities for licensed professionals by merging cutting edge technology with professional expertise, she continues her lifelong mission of elevating the aesthetics profession while addressing industry challenges. Schmeiling's unique blend of clinical experience, business acumen, and policy awareness has established her as an influential voice guiding the future of skincare and professional aesthetics. She's really an incredible woman. She's got a lot to say and a lot of passion around our industry. I hope you enjoy this episode and please, please, please make this one that you share with a friend in the aesthetic space. This is a really, really important thing. This is the type of episode that you're sharing in Facebook groups and with other aesthetic providers. As an industry, we need to unite, we need to support one another, and we need to make sure that effective scope of practice changes are being made that make sense for our industry. So please share this episode. Enjoy the interview and I can't wait to hear your thoughts. All right, Suzanne, welcome to the Spa Marketing Made Easy podcast. I'm really excited to have you here. This conversation, you know, it all started, gosh, probably around six months ago when someone sent me an article that you had written in Skin Inc. Magazine, and they said, this lady sounds incredible and you should have her as a guest on the podcast. And so I reached out, we started to get to know each other, and it's just really impressive how involved you are in really fighting for our industry, fighting for estheticians, really doing such important work that doesn't really get talked about very often, because I think it is something that, and I'll speak for myself, and it's that I just take for granted. You know, it's. We're so focused. Like, in my, in my world, I'm so focused on building businesses that I'm not thinking about the scope of practice stuff, which is essential to. To be able to build a business. So I did do an intro, but I, you know, tell people in your own words what it is that you are doing in the aesthetic space with Aesthetics Council, what is your kind of mission and purpose here?
- [05:17]
Suzanne Schmeling
Well, my whole mission and purpose after working in this industry for 30 years is to provide a almost generic organization that's not focused on a certain revenue stream to advocate for estheticians. Through my experience in the different roles I've had, I've noticed that often discussion and nuanced and detailed discussion around regulation and informing and educating regulators has been completely missing. So I've really focused on trying to educate and build relationships with each board's executive directors. Sometimes it's, you know, helpful, sometimes it's not. And then education, my focus in Love has always been education. I've written several books and you know, just redone curriculum with Pivot Point. So I'm really focused on making sure that education is standard and uniform across the US So that when we do talk to regulators about what's going on, it makes sense and we have legally defensible information. But we really need, I really need to get this industry organized because there's so many threats to us. So our, that is our focus is really trying to educate regulators and help them make really smart decisions so we don't lose our profession.
- [06:39]
Daniela Warner
So let's, let's talk about scope of practice. And this is something that, as I'm sure you know more than anybody else, it is a full time job to understand what you're able to do in your state. And you know, I've been in the industry almost 20 years now. And the part of the reason that I became an entrepreneur in the first place was because I married my husband who was active duty military and we ended up moving 12 different times, living in different states. And the scope of practice is different in every single state. And where I learned and where I grew up, I kind of grew up in derm offices and plastics offices and I didn't know how to wax. I wasn't really great at doing facials. I was doing energy based devices Dr. On site. But still that was kind of my model. And I'm like, if we end up in California or if we end up in, you know, some state that has regulations that I know that I won't be able to do legally to do the services that I've been doing for years, then I'm out of a job. And so for me it was a livelihood. It was either I'm going to go to school and become a nurse or I'm going to become an entrepreneur. And 11 years ago I made that choice to become an entrepreneur. I'm glad that I did. But that's also a luxury that not everybody has. You know, a lot of people really enjoy and have such a deep passion for solving problems in the skin, for connecting with their clients, for really helping build confidence. And when there's already still much that goes into the kind of expertise of how to solve these problems and then you layer on, oh, but I'm also running my own business and all of those and then my own family and personal life. And just being a human, it gets really heavy to think like, what can I do? What can I not do? And it's yeah, so that's what you're really focusing on is how do we make sure that we're aware of scope of practice in the different states? How am I aware of what these regulations and changes are? I mean, I know personally, I've worked with practice owners where the regulations changed and they had to close their business because they were a non physician owned med spa and the state changed or they realized that they were operating illegally even though they initially opened the business legally. When the scope changed, they had to then transition into an MSO and spend 30, 40 grand to make that transition.
- [09:31]
Suzanne Schmeling
Right.
- [09:32]
Daniela Warner
I mean, it's a, it's not pennies we're talking about here.
- [09:35]
Suzanne Schmeling
No, it's livelihoods. It's our professional careers. It's. You know, first of all, one of the things that I face all the time when I'm out there talking is how uneducated estheticians are and we're not qualified to do this, we're not qualified to do that. When I started in the 90s, there was no such thing as a med spa. I had doctors coming to me with the initial laser hair removals when I owned my own day spa, wanting to use a room to do this. And at the time we knew there was a lot of problems with these lasers. And from there we've been watching, I call it just the medicalization of beauty. And that's a problem not only for us in our career, but for our clients. This is really turning into an issue where access is going to be limited as well. I mean, we know in some areas of the nation it's impossible just even to get a decent doctor's appointment in time. So we're seeing some things happen that are, let's be really frank here, it's based on money. When I hear the safety argument that comes up, which is what you're, your clients that had to shut down. More than likely some things were passed on a medical side that were citing client safety. Well, the data around that has been tweaked a bit. And so there's been some really good arguments. We've been able to go up and fight on some of these claims, but it's turning into a fight that not only are we going to be the losers, but our clients are as well, or patients.
- [11:05]
Daniela Warner
Well, let's clarify that because I do think that there are certain things that should be done by a medical professional. For example, injectables. I don't think estheticians have any business doing injectables, but there are, I think what you're talking about there's certain, like I know in Maryland they tried to take away the ultrasonic scrubber. Like what does that do? What does that do? You know, like why, what sense does that make? So it's, it's what we're talking about here are things, you know, in my understanding, and admittedly I don't have anywhere near the depth of understanding around regulation that you do. But my understanding is that as estheticians we should be able to work in the epidermis. And so services that only affect the epidermis we should be able to perform. And so like no injections, you know, there are certain energy based devices that should be have a medical professional that's doing them. There should be services like medically assisted weight loss. You need a medical professional. But we're talking about some very basic, simple services that estheticians. There's not a reasonable argument of why we should not be able to do those services.
- [12:36]
Suzanne Schmeling
Yeah, you're correct. And even when we're talking about energy based devices, it's a really broad category and there's different levels and types of technology that should be identified that estheticians can use. So for example, when we're talking about, let's say radio frequency, there's certain levels of radio frequency that yeah, probably should be under medical supervision, but then there's others that can be used in the aesthetic space that should be acceptable. But when you see a statute that basically blocks all energy devices or anything considered class two, you've just killed several different categories. And so the misunderstandings around that is a big deal. Now when we're talking about medicalization of beauty treatments, of course when you're talking about injectables and things like that, you need to have specific training. And I will even go as far as to say that there's a lot of medical professionals that should not be doing it unless they've gone through specific training. So it's more than just you're this category. Don't touch the skin or the face in this way. It's what's the training standard. And that honestly is one of the really tough areas even in medical that they can't agree on. We're getting better as technology evolves, but we've got to really find a way to speak a common language, not only in aesthetics, but in medical aesthetics, and find a way to get these regulators to fully understand what it is that we do. Now if we have a regulatory board, you know, I've had a couple of states that have been like, we don't want to regulate this at all. That's a problem within the, the government within that state. And so estheticians on the ground absolutely have to get more involved with their own boards and, and helping to educate them because there are, you know, we do have some, we have some issues, obviously, on the political front and regulatory front that we're coming up against. But it's just about really getting clear about what these modalities are and what the safety factor is, which also means that our vendors have to get involved. Every time we get something new released to the market that sounds really cool and is making more medical claims, automatically a board looks at that and says, nope, that's medical. Even though we know how the device works in the skin may not be beyond that epidermal layer. So there's, you know, there's marketing you've got to deal with, there's regulatory, and then also the education side. So it's complicated.
- [15:10]
Daniela Warner
Talk to me a little bit about the, the process, because we were talking before the show about how sometimes a. A board will release a memo versus the actual procedural process of getting something into law or making it a statute, or the proper terminology is how are we looking at this public process versus memo to understand what is within our scope.
- [15:37]
Suzanne Schmeling
So that's where it starts to get really complicated. The reality is the only, the only definition of what's within a scope of practice needs to come from the AG's office in your state, which there's always an Attorney general or deputy Attorney General that's assigned to your board. So normally when rules are put into place, there is a public process, which means that you can speak up, you know, tell them about your own experience with the device or modality. Vendors should be showing up providing their safety data. Everybody who is a stakeholder around this issue should show up and help educate the board. Usually this process takes about a year. So regulations do not change quickly, and there should be that full public process. What I'm starting to see, for example, bringing up Illinois, is you have boards that are regulatory agencies that are being asked by certain entities to give their opinion around modalities and their opinion, it just depends on the state that you're in. Sometimes it's called a memo, sometimes it's other, you know, regulatory notice. But essentially what they do is they give their opinion about what's within scope and what's out of scope. Where it gets really complicated. And what I have to do is I then have to go look at administrative law for the state and find out is that Legal, does the board have the authority to just release an opinion piece about what's within scope? If it does, then what has to happen is an appeal, and you may even need to go to your governor to do so Also, if that's the case, sometimes that's legislative. So separating the legislative from regulatory and regulatory is really where I spend a lot of my time. It's really finding out, is this a legal interpretation of what's within scope, and if it is not, how do we challenge it? Most of it is done just out of not knowing or being influenced by other outside entities. So it's important in those cases that we identify what the process is. So Illinois was not an open rules regulatory process. There was no announcement, there was no meetings around it. It was just updated and released.
- [17:58]
Daniela Warner
Can you share a little bit more about what happened in illinois?
- [18:01]
Suzanne Schmeling
Sure. So December 2nd, they updated their prohibited list, and you can go to. I think it's idper. I have to look at it. But go to Illinois State and look at your board, and essentially what they've put is out of scope. Is pretty much everything that we're doing, chemical peels, led, anything that's an energy device, they've also mixed in their neuromodulators and things like that that we know are under supervision. But the way it is written is so broad that it's essentially shutting down estheticians right now. The kicker in this memoir is they also added the supervision side to it. So the way I am reading this, and it's also not very well written, but how I'm interpreting this is you no longer can even have an mso. You've got to have direct supervision. So then you've got to go look at what are the direct supervision laws in that state. And it does. It takes a bit of time to go through and research and figure that out. And that's where I spend a lot of my time. So right now, what we're trying to do, Terry Wojak and I are putting together a webinar for Illinois estheticians in order to go through, step by step, what our rights are and what we can do. The other side of this, the difference between a regulatory action and something like this is enforcement. If you have an inspector walk through the door and they're going to cite you on something, just like if you've gotten pulled over for a speeding ticket, they've got to be able to cite the law, the number, what it is, and write you a ticket. The gray area here is what are they citing on? So in the case of Illinois, are they citing practice of medicine? If so, they need to list the statute that's being enforced. Well, that statute and regulation comes under the medical board. So who is that inspector representing? So there's some real legal issues around it, but as an esthetician, you're working all day, you're trying to run your business, you're busy, and somebody walks through your door and hands you a citation. You don't have time to sit there and fight that. You just get scared and stop what you're doing and take the ticket. That is the problem, the way things are being enforced and interpreted, especially for a group like us that is not organized. And we're also. We don't have deep pockets like some of the other professions out there, medical, for one. And so it can be a little bit difficult to find help to go fight something. And I've been involved in a lot of that.
- [20:38]
Daniela Warner
Can I ask what the proper process is? Do you not accept the ticket or do you. Is there a. You know, if you get a speeding ticket, it's like, if you want to contest this, you can show up in court at this date. Is there a process?
- [20:51]
Suzanne Schmeling
There is, yeah. Basically the same process. So regulations between a speeding ticket to, you know, even getting cited in as a profession, it's the same type of process. So you'll be issued the ticket. For example, in California, I've been involved in a few of those. California will issue a letter and then the board administrator will take a look at the case and decide whether or not to cite. So even though you're issued something, usually they're issuing a ticket or a warning when they come through and inspect, and I'm talking California, you accept that, and then later you're going to get a letter that confirms it. And then you're also going to get an actual citation with a citation number and a cited regulation that you have broken. So it's a little bit different than a speeding ticket where they hand you that right then and there. From there, you do absolutely have a right to contest it and probably should with aesthetics. Council members, I'm usually involved in helping them fight those citations, unless it's a disinfection citation, because usually there's been something that has gone wrong or that you've overlooked. It's got to be very egregious for me to get involved in that. But when it comes to practice of medicine citation, which actually can turn into a misdemeanor and potentially a felony if it continues. So practice of medicine citations are A big deal and should never be ignored and should always be fought. Unless you are doing something that's obviously medicine, like doing injections without supervision or something.
- [22:23]
Daniela Warner
So there were a couple of other states you had mentioned, Idaho and Texas that had some pretty big changes. And very recently Texas just had something pass through. Can you talk to us about those things?
- [22:36]
Suzanne Schmeling
Yeah, let's talk about Texas First. Texas. This just got filed March 4th. Unfortunately, this came from a very bad situation where we had a woman die from iv. An IV done within a med spa that most definitely is a medical practice. It should not, in my opinion, be done outside of medical supervision. So we have a death from there. It's morphed into regulating med spas as a whole. And the theory behind it is called HB 3749. And the theory behind it is safe med spas. Most people can get behind that. We know we want our clients to be safe. The problem is in the definition of what practice of medicine is, what cosmetic procedures are considered practice of medicine. It is so broad that the way it's written, when regulations are then going to be put into place, things like led, low energy devices that we may be able to use, all of that will be out of scope of practice. The devil is in the details. When you look at these bills that are presented, you've got to understand what that definition is going to do to the modalities that are used. And that's where I'm heavily involved. I'm involved in a state like Alaska where we're going through a med spa work group committee and I've been able to break that out. We've got to get really clear. So the terminology within this bill that has been submitted is not acceptable to our scope of practice. In theory, the bill may be able to keep some people safe, but it also requires on site supervision. So that in turn is going to affect a lot of your clients too, Daniela, where, you know, an MSO basically would be illegal. They're going to have to be on site at all times.
- [24:26]
Daniela Warner
So this is it defined. I mean, we have a lot of nurses in our world as well. And they're hiring estheticians because estheticians are such an important piece of the puzzle, right? And, and what we're teaching is like, hey, if you're an np, focus on the things that NPS can do. If you're send your estheticians to do the skin care, to do the facials, to do the chemical peels, right? All these things that they're so good at. And estheticians are like, I don't think I'm surprising anybody by saying that they are the absolute most educated around skin care and they're best at skincare sales. Like, nurses are just not. That's not their thing. That's not their. Not their thing.
- [25:08]
Suzanne Schmeling
Right, right.
- [25:09]
Daniela Warner
I love my nurses.
- [25:10]
Suzanne Schmeling
I love you.
- [25:11]
Daniela Warner
But your estheticians are way better at skin care. It's. It's what it is. And so it makes sense from a business standpoint, like, hey, have everybody the right people in the right positions. But if you're, say you're a CRNA in Texas and you have a team of estheticians, is that considered on site or do you have to, like, what does that even mean?
- [25:34]
Suzanne Schmeling
Exactly. And so that's part of the problem with the way this bill is written. And because the devil. And you can look at a bill that's written very vaguely and in theory, you're being behind it, okay, it sounds safe. But then the unintended consequences come in in the regulatory process. So if this bill passes and all of a sudden we've got medical boards saying, oh, no, no, no, only a physician can supervise. No NPs, no advanced practice nurses in supervision. That can be done not only in a legislative process, but in a regulatory process. And so the way this is written is just. It's not fair to the industry as a whole.
- [26:13]
Daniela Warner
And it doesn't seem beneficial for the physicians either.
- [26:17]
Suzanne Schmeling
I mean, that's what I don't get with most of these bills. If a physician really looked at the business model and how to make money in a med spa, they would not be supporting things like this. They would be supporting very clear, detailed legislation that translates into actionable regulation. And that's the big deal. You know, a statute and a law only goes so far. It has to be enforced. And most of them that I see across the nation are not even enforceable. It just looks like a scope grab. And that's really disheartening, especially when people are, you know, they need to make a living. This is. We're not doing this for free. We're good at what we do. But when you look at a med spa, a good business model with a med spa is having well trained estheticians. We're going to make our income, we're going to pay for our salary, we're going to make a lot of income for the owners of the med spa, and we should also be able to take part in the ownership of that med spa. So, you know, for example, the way California is set up. It's really not beneficial to anybody but physicians. And that's just truly, truly unfair.
- [27:24]
Daniela Warner
So we've highlighted a very big kind of elephant in the room, right? The. The state of our industry. The. The things that are going on that are affecting us that we're not necessarily aware of now that that is out in the open, and we have people saying, well, hey, how can I help? Everybody's going to be able to have a different level of time commitment and ability, right? Like, people have kids, people have lives, people have bills to pay. And there's. There's a lot of things that, as much as you would desire to help, maybe you just, like, don't have the ability to read through and truly understand what Allah is saying. You know, what are the things that we can do on all different levels to help unite our industry, to help really get meaningful scope of practice? Because I think that there is, like, there's clearly things that estheticians can do incredibly well. There's clearly things that nurses do incredibly well. There's clearly things that physicians do incredibly well. And how can we define those so that we're all working to support one another and lifting up the industry? You know, it's like, the more, I believe the more we all work together and the more that we respect one another, the better that this whole industry is going to be. It's so. So where do we go from here?
- [29:00]
Suzanne Schmeling
Right? So that's. That's one of the big issues, you know, and why I started the aesthetics council is because I can read statute. You know, I. I know how to do that deep work. It's time consuming.
- [29:11]
Daniela Warner
Did you ever want to study law? Because that just doesn't sound like a fun. Okay. My husband, like, wants to go to law school for fun. I'm like, really? What is fun about that? But he listens to, like, the SUPR report things on fast forward. I'm like, oh, my God, we'd get along very well.
- [29:28]
Suzanne Schmeling
Yes, I did. That was my path initially, and I got a little derailed with, you know, some family issues that happened. My stop gap was aesthetics, and I was doing makeup and doing aesthetics to get me through college and said, open today, spa. And the rest is history. So, yeah, I spend a lot of time there. I don't know why I have this. I just have it. I guess it's a gift. I don't know if it's a good way to go to sleep at night is read some statute. But the reason I did the aesthetics council so that we would. I would have A way to be able to do that within, you know, reason and be able to pull people in as far as the day to day. How do you help out? Well, the first thing that you've got to do, even if you have kids, you're busy and I understand exhaustion. You've got to watch your boards and you've got to watch your state legislature and we try to monitor as much as possible. I have some really great contacts, the different, you know, government affairs organizations that will kind of give me a heads up. But I need the estheticians in their states to be notifying me. Hey, this bill came up. I don't know what this means, so.
- [30:40]
Daniela Warner
But I mean even let's zoom out. Is there like an email list that we get on in our state? How do we even find right piece? Like let's zoom out, zoom out.
- [30:51]
Suzanne Schmeling
Go to your. Your state board should have a way for you to sign up for every single meeting. You should be able to get a notice that there is going to be a meeting coming up every single time there is one. So it should be happening now. I know there's been some issues. Let's take. We kind of mentioned Idaho. Idaho has not been good at informing the estheticians there. In fact, in 2017 there was a law that was passed that prohibited all Class 2 devices. It just snuck right through the legislature. No one that I've talked to had any idea about it. So, you know, it's. It's a mess up on our side of the industry as well because you have other organizations that consider themselves associations that are not monitoring this. And it's difficult. It's really difficult unless you spend several thousand dollars a month just to monitor this stuff. So it's really relying on. We have a lot of great members and I get notices from members all the time. Hey, this bill came up. What does this mean? Can you look at it? So things like that are really, really helpful. So bottom line, if you see something coming up, you're unsure about it, just message me or email me and we can take.
- [32:03]
Daniela Warner
Do you have to be licensed in that particular state? Like so for example, I live in the D.C. area. We have D.C. maryland, Virginia. There's a lot of people that might be licensed in D.C. but not in Virginia or what. Are you still able to get notifications from the board from all three states even if you're not licensed in all three of those states?
- [32:25]
Suzanne Schmeling
Sure, I get notifications from Virginia every month. So I've signed up for almost every state that I can identify how to Sign up. I've done it.
- [32:34]
Daniela Warner
Okay.
- [32:35]
Suzanne Schmeling
Yeah, you can get notification. It's usually regulatory. It's not legislative. So the legislative side is the really hard part because a lot of things can pop up that you won't even hear about unless your local news reports on it. So legislatively is a big, tough monster that we have to use special software to really look at. Sometimes there's estheticians on the ground. They get word that, hey, you know, for example, in Rhode Island, I've got some people who are watching Rhode Island. We've got a bad bill going through right now. They notified me that was going on, but then when I went to the ledge serve, I could not find that because it wasn't in a certain process. So the legislative side is a little more difficult, but one where as an esthetician, you just kind of have to keep your ears open. If you hear something, definitely let us know. But in your realm, with your license, you've got to watch your board. It's a pain in the butt, I admit it. It's not a fun job, but you have to stay on top of it. I. I hear a lot. Oh, the scope changes really fast. Well, it doesn't. Scope will take at least a year to change. The thing that happens quickly is when an interpretation may come from the board. And that's the part that we may have to go, okay, that's not really legal. We need to go fight that. That can happen. But that's still. You're going to get noticed from the board meeting. They. They have to put it in an agenda. And if you have a board that is very quiet and closed and they're not giving out public information, that's not legal, number one. And we can also put in a public records request to get that information. Hopefully we don't. You know, there's a few states I've dealt with that are kind of like that, but the whole goal is to be legal and open up that process. So you've just got to be aware and you've got to be careful what you're putting out on social media as well. I know several boards that watch esthetician groups and some of the things that they talk about, and they will use some of these things to restrict modalities because they feel it's medical in nature, and that's a problem because you can't control social media. But as a professional, I really love how the nurses do it, where it's very ethical. As you have your guidelines, we really need to adopt things like that. As well, so that we're not such a target because we're so called unprofessional or doing things that are going to harm people. So it's being aware, reaching out when you see something that may not be correct. And then the other thing that I like to bring up is educating yourself, really getting good at what your profession is and being safe about it and being very selective about where you get your education and information. Really do your due diligence. If it sounds like it's too good to be true or it's strictly manufacturer education, you've got to broaden that. I mean, we're not just salespeople for manufacturers, right? We have a profession. We understand skin science. We always need to be evolving and learning. But be smart about what you're doing. If something seems like the results are too good to be true or it looks like it's going to cause some harm to your client, even though it may be hot in the market right now, take a step back as a professional and really take a look at that. Plasma pen's on the radar right now. Plasma pen. We saw the whole issue with microneedling come up. FDA started to get involved with that. You're going to see FDA getting involved with plasma pen, but yet we've got hundreds, if not thousands of estheticians that have bought this. And now the boards are going, oh, wait, this is. This is too deep. This is causing too many issues, pulling that off the market. Microneedling is the one modality we should be able to do. And in a majority of the states I deal with, we cannot because of how it was introduced to the market and how our vendors brought things in that were not FDA approved until that whole process was done. So it's really about our industry raising the level of professionalism, doing a little bit of self regulation, if you will, and staying involved, but being smart about it.
- [37:00]
Daniela Warner
Well, thank you for. I mean, there's clearly so much passion and dedication in what you're doing, and that really makes a difference. I know that's something that probably goes unnoticed. And so just thank you for dedicating your time and energy into that. Can you tell us a little bit about where people can find you and follow you to get in touch with you? What is. And we'll include all of these links below the episode as well. But what's the best place for people to connect with you?
- [37:32]
Suzanne Schmeling
Probably the best place would be our website, aestheticscouncil.org you know, obviously we have some social presence, but it's We're. I'm not doing as much on social because it was throttled for a bit because we talk about legislative stuff. So that I've pulled back a little bit. But you can always message me there, too. But aestheticscouncil.org would be your. Your main contact point.
- [37:53]
Daniela Warner
Wonderful. Was there anything else that you wanted to share on this episode to make it complete? Any question I didn't ask or anything like that?
- [38:02]
Suzanne Schmeling
Not really that I can think of, other than I'd like to say. I know I sound like the doom and gloom all the time, and I've been talking about these issues for a long time. I want everybody to know that you don't have to be overwhelmed, that if we all work together, we really can support each other and we can have longevity in this profession. It's just a matter of you getting involved, reaching out, and knowing that you're not alone. You know, we are in this together. We really are.
- [38:31]
Daniela Warner
Oh, that's beautiful. I love that. All right, my friends, thank you so much for listening. Make sure that you do your part. Go to your state board. Find a way to get on their email list. Start there. Right. Just take one step, one step, one step. And see what you can do to help unify our profession, to help ensure that we have proper scope of practice. All of those things. It will make a difference. So, Suzanne, thank you so much. I'm so appreciative of you. And we will catch you on the next episode.