5 MINUTES WITH... AMY BIRD

Nurse prescriber and founder of KAST Aesthetics, Amy Bird, discusses her new role as chair of the British Association of Medical Aesthetic Nurses (BAMAN), the importance of precision in the sector and aesthetic trends for this year and beyond

Congratulations on your new role as chair of BAMAN! What have you been up to at the association?

Thank you, I have been doing a lot of relationship building in the past three months to get us at more tables to give nurses in the sector a louder voice and influence. I’ve been having regular meetings with the Joint Council for Cosmetic Practitioners (JCCP) and am in talks with the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) and the Royal College of Nursing (RCN). I’ve got a strategic approach from the association to deliver. It’s a business at the end of the day, as well as an association for nurses. Ultimately, my responsibility is to ensure the association moves in the right direction.

What do you think you will bring to the role?

Relevance, and I think people will relate to me as a personality. I suppose I am the modern-day aesthetic nurse. It’s not all about tea and cake – we’ve now got nurses who work in other sectors that are from every single background. I hope I bring that real, relatable Amy character and drive a bit of spunk and traction in areas where things have been quite stagnant.

Speaking of stagnation where in the sector do we need to move forward the most?

Standards! There are a few people who work within what we would call ‘the advanced standard.’ But, at the moment, we haven’t got one, so we’re aiming to push that through for nurses to map against. I want to bring us all together through more networking. I think bringing our community together and sharing and encouraging standards, that’s where we’re going to get stronger. I think it’s also time for appreciation that nurses are among some of the best practitioners in the country. We need to push nurses more to the forefront - people forget that we are the ones who brought dermal fillers into the country.

What is BAMAN doing to enhance sector professionalism?

We have been at the table influencing and commenting on things like the NMC roundtable discussion before Christmas on remote prescribing. We spent hours on responses for the Scottish consultation to bring that kind of high-level standard of what we expect from nurses in the sector. As BAMAN, we have competencies that will be mapped against Advanced Nursing so we can bring that first nurse standard to life, and hopefully, that will become a qualification as well.

We are hearing a lot about precision in medical fields. What is the importance of precision in aesthetics?

Precision should be at the heart of your practice for a number of reasons. Precision, whether it be experience, consultation, or treatment, will give you the best outcome and the best patient journey. You need to be precise in knowing who your patient is, understanding what your patient journey should look like in terms of safety, efficacy, and from a business perspective. Breaking it down to the treatment, you must know your anatomy inside out – you should be relying on anatomy first, not relying on the drug’s ability to get you out of jail and mop up for you.

But, you also want to know that the precision is there with the product you are using for the best indication. Using Evolus’ Nuceiva as an example, I can produce outcomes for my patient with a precise tool in my hand that I wouldn’t have been able to with another drug that isn’t as precise. Precision for me is paramount, and precision and personalised medicine trends are continuing to spill over into aesthetics.

What are we seeing clients want out of their injectables in 2025?

Again, more precision and personalisation. It is not all about completely static faces anymore - people are realising that movement is youthful and a sign of good treatment as well. For me, toxin is a static line treatment only. That’s why you have it, not because you are trying to freeze everything. It’s about ensuring that you’re addressing the static line and where that comes from anatomically – contraction of the muscle in that repeated area. You can do this with Nuceiva, because it’s such a precise toxin; you can target certain areas to contract and elevate, or target certain areas to remain still. You can control that with the precision of the drug, so you can have toxin while still appreciating dynamic movement.

We’re becoming more and more consumer-driven because of the patient’s increasing ability to micro-select. Patients will ask, ‘What toxin are you using, or what collagen is this treatment going to develop?’ They are becoming much savvier.

What other trends are you seeing in injectables?

I think PLLAs are here to stay, as well as an integratable filler that you need less of. Obviously, I’m an RHA girl, and I think ‘erasers’ are definitely a trend. I’m not talking about cheeks, te-mples or chin, but the ones that will treat fine lines, rejuvenation, and hydration of lips…I think that’s where injectables are going.