The law under every clinic post
Section 4A of the Medicines (Advertisement and Sale) Act 1956 prohibits publishing any advertisement referring to a skill or service relating to the treatment, prevention or diagnosis of a condition affecting the human body, where it is capable of inducing a person to seek the advice of the advertiser. Two things are exempt: advertisements approved by the Medicine Advertisements Board, and those published by a private clinic run by a registered practitioner with a valid practising certificate.
The board's 2025 guidance sets out when approval is needed: a skill and service, a claim to treat, prevent or diagnose, a condition of the human body, and an inducement to seek those services. Four elements together.
There is a second route through. The same guidance says educational articles on healthcare issues may be communicated by speaking, writing and broadcasting without board approval, provided the content is solely for public education, and it names what that excludes: solicitation encouraging the public to seek treatment, and images of practitioners performing procedures on patients. This journal lives on that route.
Advertising is defined more widely than the word suggests
The Council's 2025 guideline on disseminating information defines advertising in its broadest sense: all the ways a person is made publicly known, by himself or by others without objection on his part, in any channel that can fairly be regarded as for the purpose of obtaining patients or promoting professional advantage. Touting and canvassing sit inside that definition and are unethical.
The Code of Professional Conduct, quoted in the same guideline, says doctors should refrain from self-advertisement, that a practitioner successful at achieving publicity may not be the most appropriate doctor to consult, and that advertising may raise illusory hopes of a cure.
None of the documents I have read carries a clause naming testimonials, and I will not invent one. The definition does carry the phrase by others without objection on his part, wide enough to reach what an account did not post and did not take down.
Four things worth noticing
The superlative comes first, because it is the cheapest thing in a caption and the one the guideline names directly. It is unethical for practitioners to claim to be the best or the only one in a field, and claims of firsts or breakthroughs are contentious, better left to professional and academic bodies.
A number arriving before an assessment is the second. The Council advises caution about promotional activity, including door gifts, investigations at discounted rates, and directing people present to the practitioner's place of practice. What a price quoted before an examination is actually doing is a longer argument.
The third is a device name with nobody attached to it. Practitioners are discouraged from endorsing health-related products across media platforms, anything endorsed must be approved by regulators such as NPRA or the Medical Device Authority, and unsubstantiated claims are out. A machine has a brochure. A doctor has a scope.
The fourth is the before-and-after, and here I will be careful, because the documents I have read contain no clause banning them. They do carry a rule against advertising that misleads the public on the nature of a facility's services, and a requirement that patient-specific information stays off public platforms. The photographic decisions made before any such image is published are why this clinic does not run them.
The two things a feed cannot show
The first is whether a diagnosis happened. The aesthetic guideline requires a practitioner to exclude, by proper examination and relevant investigations, any pathological condition causing the blemish before treating it, and to refer if one is suspected. A camera records a device on skin. It cannot record what was ruled out first.
The second is whose hands were on the handpiece. The same guideline permits employing non-medical assistants such as beauticians and cosmetic therapists, prohibits taking them on as business partners, and makes the registered doctor vicariously and totally liable for untoward occurrences involving them. Which procedures a doctor is credentialed for sits in the public registers, and what those documents certify is the companion piece.
What a feed is actually good for
Social media is not a separate jurisdiction. The Council names the platforms individually, Instagram and TikTok among them, says the Code applies online exactly as it does anywhere else, asks practitioners to identify themselves clearly, and asks that anything shared publicly be accurate and evidence-based. I have written separately about why I post at all.
A tidy feed proves nothing, and a doctor with a dull one may be the better clinician. The smaller question it answers is whether an account behaves as though the rules exist. One that never reaches for the superlative, and says who does the work, has told you how it thinks. It has told you nothing about your face.
That part happens in a room, and it starts with a question.
