Becky's Blog: What's Happening At External Affairs
Hello! My name is Becky Wilkins and I've been a registered nurse for over 30 years. My family started External Affairs Medical Spa’s almost 25 years ago. It's been quite a journey since then and we are extremely grateful to our clients for supporting our business troughout the years, as it’s certainly changed. When we started out all those years ago, Medical Spa’s didn't even exist. Products like Botox weren't even approved for cosmetic injections back then.
"Over the years we have really evolved our business to meet the needs of our clients. It's interesting to explore and find out what's out there, what's available."
We've been doing skin treatments for years and years, but there's this huge gap between a basic facial for example to the point where laser treatments were introduced. Treatments that could actually cause a change in the skin, that was one of the first things that we dove into. Shortly after that lasers for hair removal became extremely popular and then I think within a year or two that's when Botox first hit the market.
We Are Passionate About Educating Our Clients
Education is something that we are extremely passionate about here at External Affairs. We believe so much in educating our staff and making sure that they're up to date on the newest technologies, most modern equipment, safest techniques, and most effective ways to document whether it's photography or measuring.
"We also believe in educating our clients because it's important that when you’re exploring these types of services in the Medical Spa industry that you are very well educated, and have options about what can be done for your particular concern."
Some patients come in and their goal is to look 20 years younger and somebody else may come in and just want to get rid of a little wrinkle. So education is such a huge component of what we do.
We recently launched our EA Beauty Workbooks which is a really great tool for the patient to start the process at home. You can actually download our workbook and go through and do a self assessment, maybe finding out what your needs are.
Our Consultation Process
So when a patient comes through our doors for the very first time we're quite adamant about making sure that they get a really thorough consultation. The process starts with reviewing the medical conditions with either the physicians or the physician's assistants and then working with the nurses or skin care providers to come up with a beautiful treatment plan that bridges both goals, treatments available, while also taking into account people's budgets.
We Have Treatments For People Of All Ages
We serve a wide range of patients as far as age goes, the cosmetic procedures are definitely becoming more popular with the 20 and 30 year olds as it's preventative at that point time. A lot of women and men that come into see us that are in their 40s, 50s, 60s, and beyond, might be wanting to address maybe how they look but a big component of that is really what's going on inside the body and that's where our Regenerative Medicine programs really come into play.
We do a complete bioidentical hormone replacement program (BHRT) where we follow people very thoroughly, making people look more youthful on the outside and feel better on the inside. It has been extremely rewarding for us when we can help people sleep better, maybe restore their libido and help them feel better overall. That is a big part of what we do, again that combination therapy.
Giving Back To The Community
So when it comes to education not only is it important to us to educate our clients and staff, but one of the things that we believe very strongly here at EA is the education of children. We have some Aboriginal threads in our family and we chose quite a few years ago to support a private school called Mamawi Atosketan Native School. It was a kindergarten to grade 9 school and they needed a high school built so both our family and External Affairs got very involved and we've actually become the major donor.
We're pretty excited because September of 2018 the high school opened and we continue to support that project. Our staff go down and teach the kids different things from spa services, hygiene, to pregnancy prevention. It’s really fun that our staff have jumped on board to teach these kids.
We believe that education is their way to change their world and we often tell them that they need to become the doctors, the lawyers, the accountants, and the politicians. So we're big supporters of education especially with these kids.
If you are in the Edmonton or St. Albert area we would love to meet you. We've got two locations, a website full of information and our social media if you want a ton of pictures. We look forward to meeting you!
