Why are we dobbing each other in?

The injectables side of our industry has become more cutthroat than I have ever seen it, and I think it is time someone said so out loud.

At the moment it feels like every other day, if not every single day, another injector is sharing that they have been reported to AHPRA by a fellow injector or someone else in the industry. They then spend weeks or months answering an investigation into a claim that came from a colleague rather than from a patient, and they carry that stress into their clinic, their family and their sleep.

I have been in this industry for close to twenty years, and while competition has always been part of it, this feels different. It feels personal, and it feels like we have started turning on each other at exactly the moment we most need to stand together.

Because this work is hard enough without us adding each other to the list of things we have to worry about. Between TGA advertising rules, AHPRA guidelines for cosmetic procedures, prescribing requirements and the constant stream of updates, injectors are already working inside one of the most closely watched corners of healthcare in this country.

The rules shift often enough that keeping up with them is pretty much a part-time job in itself, and most injectors I speak with are truly trying to get it right. They are reading the guidelines, rewriting their social captions, checking their consent processes and asking each other what has changed this month.

When the regulators, the media and the public are already watching this closely, I find myself asking why we feel the need to add to the pressure from inside our own community.

Before I go any further, I want to be really clear about one thing. If someone is truly putting patients at risk, that has to be reported, and for registered health practitioners there are situations where reporting is a legal obligation rather than a choice, such as when a colleague is practising while impaired or intoxicated, or is departing so far from professional standards that the public is at real risk.

That is not what I am talking about. What I am seeing far more often looks like reports driven by a lost client, a falling out, a competing clinic opening down the road, a disagreement played out in the comments, or a minor technicality on someone's Instagram that a rival has decided to escalate.

The question I would ask anyone before they lodge a notification is a simple one: am I doing this because a patient could be harmed, or because it would hurt someone I see as competition? If it is the first, report it properly and privately, and if it is the second, I would gently suggest putting the phone down.

Our industry is being scrutinised so heavily right now that anyone doing something seriously wrong is very likely to be found out without a colleague needing to build the case against them.

And when a notification like that turns out to be unfounded, it is never free for the person on the receiving end. Even when the matter is eventually closed with no action, the injector has often spent months living with uncertainty, paying for legal advice, second-guessing every post and wondering whether their registration and their livelihood are safe.

The cost spreads well beyond that one person. Every investigation built on a grudge takes regulator time and attention away from the cases that truly do involve patient harm, and it slowly teaches all of us to see our peers as threats rather than as the people best placed to support us.

It also does nothing for how our industry is perceived. When injectors are publicly turning on each other, it hands critics the story that this is a sector that cannot be trusted to hold itself to a high standard, and that story affects every one of us, including the people who lodged the reports.

None of this means I am asking anyone to turn a blind eye to genuine danger, and I would never want to see a patient hurt because someone stayed quiet. What I am asking is that we build an industry where the first instinct is to support rather than to report.

That might mean having a private, respectful conversation with a colleague when you notice something in their advertising that could get them into trouble, because a quiet heads-up from a peer is often far more useful than a formal complaint. It might mean sharing regulatory updates openly instead of keeping them to ourselves, mentoring newer injectors who are still finding their feet, and being the person in a group chat who asks whether a criticism is about safety or about business.

When something does need to go to the regulator, it should go through the proper channels with the facts, rather than being announced on social media or used as a way to settle a score.

Truthfully, I do not understand why we have reached a point where dobbing each other in feels so normal, and I think it needs to be called out before it does any more damage to the people and the industry we all care about.

So I would love to hear from you. Have you been on the receiving end of a notification that came from a peer rather than a patient, and how did it affect you? Where do you think the line sits between protecting the public and policing a competitor, and what would it take for injectors to start looking out for each other again?

This is a conversation our industry truly needs to have, and I would much rather we have it together, openly, than keep watching each other from behind a complaint form.