From the operating room to one of Canada's first RN injectors, and the year it took to convince a surgeon
Why she built nurse training in 1994 when nothing existed, sold it, and started again in 2016
Inside THMA's foundation program: facial anatomy, assessment skills, medical history, skin quality, neuromodulators, fillers and PRP, and the business of practice
Advanced training, and why lip enhancement is taught one-on-one rather than in a group
The adverse events course, and the informed consent conversation most providers avoid having
The biggest obstacle for a newly qualified nurse, and why it isn't clinical skill
Social media and the colleges: what you can post, what you can't, and why self-injecting content is a problem
Why a curriculum that hasn't changed in five years is a red flag

As Tracey Hotta puts it, on informed consent: "If it's documented in the literature and something happens and you haven't told them, you're accountable." And on the Instagram version of the job: "They go, oh my God, there's so much to learn. It's like, yeah, it's medicine. There's a lot to learn."

About the guest: Tracey Hotta, RN, BSN, CPSN-R, CANS, ISPAN-F, is the founder of THMA and a partner of The DermaRoom Collective. She began nursing in 1984 and moved into aesthetics in 1990, becoming one of the first registered nurse injectors in Canada. She is a past president of ISPAN, a founding member of the Canadian Society of Aesthetic Specialty Nurses, and a member of the Registered Nurses' Association's Quarter Century Club. She lectures on facial anatomy across North America.

In this episode:

The gap between graduating and facing your first real acne patient, and why Alex built a course to close it
The pilosebaceous unit, and the four pillars of acne: follicular hyperkeratinization, excess sebum, Cutibacterium acnes, and inflammation
Why over-cleansing and over-exfoliating make acne worse, and what barrier-first treatment looks like instead
Reading the pattern: cyclical jawline breakouts versus uniform, itchy presentations, and why one patient often has several types at once
A severe cystic acne case: two weeks of stopping everything, then a simple routine, then mapped microneedling
Where Alex stands on microneedling over active acne, including her extraction and antimicrobial protocol
Three things a practitioner can change the day after finishing the course

As Alex puts it: "The key to healthy skin is a healthy microbiome." Or, on why sequence matters more than product choice: "You need to have a healthy foundation in order to use those ingredients and to use them properly."

About the guest: Alex Lee, CBAM, is a medical aesthetician practicing at Beauty Mark Medical Aesthetics in Prince Edward Island, and clinical trainer for The DermaRoom Collective. She is Course Director of Understanding Acne: From Pathophysiology to Practice.