Video Testimonials: Patients describing their own treatment, unscripted, with their consent

1. 1Filmed in the clinic, usually in the last day or two of the stay. Logistically it is the only time the patient is there.
2. 2Shot by the clinic’s own team or a contracted crew, under lighting chosen to flatter.
3. 3Guided by prompts — "tell us how you felt when you arrived", "what would you say to someone considering it" — which is why so many of them cover the same four points in the same order.
4. 4Several takes, with the best one used.
5. 5Edited for pace, with hesitation and qualification cut.
6. 6Frequently with a discount, a free touch-up or a returned deposit involved, disclosed nowhere.
7. 7Published as an outcome, although it was filmed before any outcome existed.

What you are actually seeing

• A person’s feelings about their hospitality experience, which may well have been excellent.
• Their state of mind in the first week after surgery, which is not representative of anything.
• The clinic’s editing choices.
• Selection: the patients who agreed, filmed by a company that chose which to publish.

What you are not seeing

• The result, which does not exist for months.
• Whether the price changed.
• Whether anyone answered the phone at month four.
• The patients who were not asked, or who said no.
• Whether anything was offered in return.

Written consent to publish is given at a moment of goodwill and often regretted later. People change jobs, relationships and views about who should know they had a procedure. With text or a still photograph, withdrawal is straightforward. With video it frequently is not.

What happens to a published video

• It is downloaded, re-uploaded and cut into compilations by accounts with no connection to the clinic.
• It appears in advertising on platforms the patient never agreed to.
• It is indexed against the patient’s name and face, and surfaces in searches for them personally.
• It is used by impersonators, who take established clinics’ testimonial videos to lend credibility to a scam.
• It outlives the consent, the relationship and sometimes the company.

Our actual position on patient imagery

• Consent to treatment is never conditional on consent to publication, and never will be.
• Patient photographs are published only with the specific written consent of the patients in them; others are shown privately during consultation.
• Written stories are published with consent and withdrawn on request, promptly and without discussion.
• Films are made only months after treatment, with written consent that sets out what can and cannot be withdrawn later.

A conversation with a former patient

Some patients have volunteered to speak to people considering the same procedure. Where we can match you on treatment and circumstances, we introduce you and then stay out of it — we do not listen in, we do not brief them, and we do not ask afterwards what was said. Nobody is compensated for it in any form.

Why this is better than a video

• You choose the questions, including the ones no clinic would script.
• They are speaking at twelve months or later, when there is a result to describe.
• You can ask follow-ups, which is where the useful information always is.
• They can tell you something we would not have chosen to publish.
• There are no takes and no edit.

Worth asking

1. 1Did the price change at any point after you paid?
2. 2Did anyone answer when you called at month four?
3. 3What did they get wrong?
4. 4How long did you actually need off work?
5. 5Were you told anything before you travelled that turned out not to be true?
6. 6Would you use them again — and would you send a friend?